‘I hear ’em.’ Matt smacked his hat against the one of the posts guarding the vegetable garden; his upper body was coated in dust, for the cab on the old grader was no more than a roof over a worn seat. ‘A bad business,’ he grunted. ‘If the buggers are still about, I hope they ain’t mucking around with my grader. I left ’er sitting out there at the end of the river track.’

‘Did you?’ Tilly said vaguely. She turned off the hose, her eyes on the vehicle and those emerging from it. They must have rescued a chick, because Luke was cradling something wrapped in a grubby towel.

She hurried to his side. ‘What did you find?’ He folded the material back to disclose not one but two ugly little bodies, all beak and eyes, only partially fledged. ‘They’re awfully young, aren’t they? To rear, I mean.’

‘Probably. They’re maybe five, six weeks old. I’ll have to try.’ He didn’t sound hopeful and Tilly touched his hand consolingly.

‘It won’t be your fault if you can’t. Do you know if they visited other nests?’

‘We didn’t find any,’ Sophie said, ‘but we followed the tracks back almost to the river and saw where they’d had birding nets out.’ Noting Tilly’s blank look, she explained tersely, ‘Very fine nylon with a tight weave. For little birds, finches and wrens and such. They can’t see it so they get caught and tangled up in it. Like fish. Only, tiny birds are fragile things – they die easily from shock, or maybe the speed at which they hit it. It’s said that about twenty per cent of those caught that way perish. We found the bodies, so we know the net was there.’

Tilly felt a flush of anger. ‘That’s wicked!’

‘Yes,’ her cousin agreed. ‘I’ll ring the police in Darwin, but there’s not much chance of catching anyone now.’

Later that evening her prediction was borne out by her brief conversation with the Darwin station.

‘What did the cops say?’ Tilly asked as she dished out the meal. ‘Who did you speak to?’

‘Some sergeant. Who as good as told me not to hold my breath waiting on a conviction.’ Sophie sighed. ‘Of course, it’s not easy for them. Travellers must outnumber locals in Darwin at this time of year. Then the birds could be transported by road or plane or sea. And the hell of it is, it doesn’t matter to the criminals if they lose half of them – their thinking is there’re plenty more to be trapped. It’s not just birds either. They smuggle terrapins, lizards, snakes . . . Anything that’s protected, which is all our native fauna now.’

‘How are the chicks?’ Tilly asked Luke. ‘If they’re so valuable, why didn’t they take them too?’