ABSTRACT
Many societies across the world see birds as providers of information—be it environmental, cultural, or symbolic. Augury, the ancient Roman practice of reading the flights of particular birds as omens, is one such example; interpretations of bird calls, bird pecking, and bird entrails are others. One way in which Central Australian Aboriginal people "know" of monsters is through the visual, acoustic, and sensory presence of birds: distinctive calls, fleeting movements, camouflaged sightings, scratched tracks, and the sensation of being "watched" are qualities displayed in uncannily similar ways by various species of birds and their monstrous counterparts. Warlpiri songs and Dreaming narratives contain numerous examples of these bird/monster figures—all combining bird-like and human-like features—who evoke fear in other ancestral beings central to the stories and songs. Bird/monsters are referred to by Warlpiri people as "monsters" and "Kurdaitcha birds" in English, and—importantly—as Jarnpa or Kurdaitcha in Warlpiri, that is to say, they formally share their names with those monsters.
