Surely it was because the massed scarecrows of the Gold Creek Traders Scarecrow Competition had just gone on display. It is hard to think like a crow (like a raven, really, because the fowls Canberrans call crows are ravens) but one can imagine that if just one scarecrow is scary for a crow then a whole team of them must be terrifying.

Canberra primary school children have created the team for the inaugural Gold Creek Traders Scarecrow Competition. The creations will go on show at the 2015 ActewAGL Royal Canberra Show but until February 2015 they're on display (for the time being theatrically posed next to and among the rushes of an ornamental billabong) at T on the Square, Gold Creek.

What's more, those of us with a democratic itch to vote for or against something (and counting the many, many sleeps before we can vote to show our deep appreciation of the Abbott government) can vote for the People's Choice scarecrow of our choice. Each one has a little white ballot bucket at its feet. Winners will receive a sash and certificate and win prize money for their schools.

This columnist, getting in voting practice for the next federal election, voted for the wittily named Rustle Crow scarecrow. Fashioned by children of Curtin Primary School he is a giant, bug-eyed, wild-eyed, long-winged crow or raven made from recycled and re-used materials. For, example his big yellow bill is made from milk cartons.

Three of his proud creators, Hamish Roberts, Joel Piazza and Racquel Martin (all in our picture) explained to us that they thought that if Rustle is ever given a guernsey out in the field he'll be very effective. His ebony plumage, made of shredded black plastic garbage bags, will flap in the wind and make him seem alive and noisily "rustly".

The name Rustle had occurred to them because while they were assembling him his black plastic plumage made rustling noises. I thought Rustle seemed, impressively, more like a pterodactyl than a crow.

Garry Ashby, CEO of the Royal National Capital Agricultural Show, said that it was fitting that the scarecrows be a display at 2015's Show because they will remind us of the struggles farmers and even backyard gardeners have to keep birds at bay. He spoke from personal experience because at his place birds ravage his precious back garden almonds.

Other scarecrows arranged at the Gold Creek billabong on Monday included Santa Crows, a life-sized Santa in full Santa regalia and dripping with strings of stars. Inexplicably he wore black wellington boots spangled with pictures of brightly-coloured dinosaurs.

Then there was straw-stuffed Walter Matilda, a traditional outback figure with a blackened billy, champagne corks dangling from the brim of his hat and a head made from a fishing buoy.

This columnist had a soft spot for Walter Matilda because, with straw protruding from beneath his shirt, he was reminiscent of Worzel Gummidge, the iconic fictitious English scarecrow created by Barbara Euphan Todd. Children of my Olden Days generation (the books were published from 1936 until the late 1950s) were brought up on Worzel, the living, walking, adventure-enjoying scarecrow of Scatterbrook Farm.

This was a magical thing for rural urchins like us because one would never see a scarecrow out in the mangel wurzel fields without imagining it to be, like Worzel, a living being, with feelings. And Worzel's feelings included a capacity for love. Just as Andrew Barr is being celebrated by the media as "the first openly gay Chief Minister" dear Worzel was in a sense the first openly heterosexual scarecrow. He was in love with Aunt Sally, a fairground doll, and spent more time wooing her than shooing away crows.

On Monday and at Gold Creek I studied Walter Matilda's enigmatic face intently for some clue to his sexuality, but that face was as expressionless as a fishing buoy or a mangel wurzel.

And while on the subject of black and largely black birds, what are we to make of this chocolatey-looking Currawong? Currawongs are usually the very essence of black and whiteness (hence their name Pied Currawong). An O'Connor reader is blessed with this one-in-a-million fowl in her garden.

"We're regularly visited by this beautiful Currawong. He has many orange features and overall looks brown. He is very shy and has keen vision – he can see us inside our house."

Fearing that she might be pulling an old columnist's leg, perhaps doing some artful Photoshopping, we asked a cerebral Canberra birdo for a rational explanation of this spectre.

"It looks to me as if it has been foraging in some ochraceous clay or mud – look at the bill. Perhaps chasing emerging insects such as cicadas. There are also various building sites around that have churned up the subsoil which will now be the consistency of reddish paint. We sometimes see waterbirds looking like that, or cockatoos or corellas."