After everything this year, what we hear when we listen to birdsong has changed

Amid the lockdowns, the sounds and sights of birds reminded me, most of all, of the extent of our connections to one another

• This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020

London midwinter, and I dream of black cockatoos. Dreams lacking vision, sonic dreams of startling intensity. At dawn the rusted-hinge sound of the cockatoos swerves away, revoked by the thin daylight.

I have been based out of the UK for several months. Having passed through a blue solstice into January, the news bulletins from Australia chronicle unprecedented fire fronts, razing tracts of the eastern seaboard to ash. Columns of smoke expunge the stars. I see that in only the barest elements of topography and geology will the landscapes I return to resemble the places I left.