Ten questions for our feathered friends

Ten questions for our feathered friends

1. To the blackbirds - Why, when you venture into my house, do you hop in, but then try to fly out, trying every window but the open one?

2. Do you wait until your bowels are full before you come in, or do you just shit all the time?

3. To the sparrows - Why do you only eat the bread I put out and turn up your beaks at the fruit? There are children starving in Africa, o little birds, and here you are, further down the food chain, behaving like fussy children.

4. To the seagulls - I see you, malingering around the sea shore, and gorging yourselves on the hot chips that young children drop during a fish and chip picnic, or that are thrown to you by insouciant young couples who think they are doing you a favour. Why aren't you fat?

5. To the magpies - whenever I am in Sydney in the early spring you harrass me. You eye me up and down the street. You wait for the opportune moment, and then you swoop. Why me?

6. To the peacocks - you spend a lot of time preening, and being big show-offs about how beautiful your feathers are, and yet you will hook up with some dowdy pea hen who looks like she fell off the ugly truck. These are classic signs that you are in the land of deep dark denial. Do you plan to come out any time soon?

7. To the tui that sat in the Pohutukawa tree outside my house in Wellington - For months on end you loudly sang the same tune over and over - it obviously wasn't working for you, so why didn't you change your tune?

8. To all the birds in Australia - you sound like pea hens look, but on steriods. Sorry, that wasn't a question.

9. To the ducks - Why don't you figure out a way to stop tasting so bloody good? Humans would bother you less.

10. To the chickens - sorry about all this cage and cramped conditions carry on. But guys, there are lots of you, compared to the farmers. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain - Why don't you get organised?