Canberra Ornithologists Group member and keen student of avifauna Con Boekel was at the bird hotspot of Campbell Park and saw and photographed "this immature magpie that appeared to be seeing what happens when you chase a rabbit".

And this rabbit topic gives us the flimsy excuse we have been looking for to bring you yet another of Flora Borsi's "animeyed" (using animal's eyes) photographic self-portraits. Monday's exciting selfie was of her looking surreally golden and being enhanced by a very golden goldfish. Today she blends beautifully with a dark bunny. There is a gallery of her surreal and super animeyed selfies online at designboom. http://www.designboom.com/art/flora-borsi-animeyed-portraits-01-21-2016/

At the COG website there is some speculation that the Campbell Park magpie may have been trying to "play" with the rabbit.

In her lovely book* about Australian magpies Professor Gisela Kaplan trills that while all mammals play only a very few bird species are playful. She finds this playfulness in the Australian magpie one of many proofs of the species' unusual intelligence.

She suspects magpies' play is not "play" in any frivolous sense. She fancies it may involve "learning to hunt and to handle wild prey ... and may also involve learning about social rank and perfect skills for dealing with social aggression and social bonding".

And so, rabbits being not very bright, this interface at Campbell Park was a meeting of intellectual unequals (a bit like a climate change sceptic, the rabbit, being bamboozled by the intellect of a well-read professor of climatology, the magpie).

While with birds, this columnist, hopelessly lost in the labyrinths of the internet, discovers that in Japan there are Owl Cafes where patrons mingle with real, live owls. This seems to be an expansion of the notions behind the Cat Cafes where cat-loving but cat-deprived souls (perhaps renting places where cats are not allowed) can have cat experiences.

But one website stumbled across scoffs that "Cat Cafes are so 2011" and that Owl Cafes are, at least in Japan, far trendier. http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-ideas/what-a-hoot-dine-with-owls-in-tokyo-and-osaka/story-fnjpja3r-1226753325048 Their success has something to do with wilderness-and-wildlife-deprived Japanese in giant cities enjoying the illusion of being in the company of beautiful wild creatures.

If we Canberrans find the idea grotesque (the owls in these cafes are captive and tethered and in their photographs with cafe patrons look decidedly uncomfortable) then perhaps it is because to live in this Bush Capital (as opposed to unbushy Tokyo or Osaka). We have such everyday access to wildlife (like the magpies in our parks and gardens), that we have no need for any artificial provision of what the good people of Tokyo and Osaka hanker for.

But in out wild suburban fancy we find ourselves imagining bird cafes using other bird species. Owls are taciturn. But what a very different, action-packed place a Silver Gull Cafe or an Ibis Cafe would be, with cafe-goers having to protect their Freakshakes from birds famous for guzzling everything in sight.

The new edition of Oxford's Australian National Dictionary is to include "Tip Turkeys" because it is such a common Australian name (emerging in about 2009) for the ibises that people see haunting rubbish tips and being brazen (inviting themselves to share our lunches) in the CBDs of our cities.

Meanwhile this column, mostly so very up-to-date and cutting edge (discussing new trends in cafes, new words in new dictionaries, bringing you new artworks like Flora Borsi's self-portraits) always does have one toe dipped in the past. Every day we look back at something happening exactly 100 years ago.

One recent item in this column's On This Day - 100 years Ago niche reported how, exactly 100 years ago, dynamic columnist "Clio" raged against a vandal. The swine had snapped off and stolen a stalactite belonging to NSW's famous Jenolan Caves. "Clio" seethed that she couldn't understand why vandal scum ever even bothered to go to places of beauty.

Jenolan Caves' marketing manager Carolyn Melbourne was understandably enthralled by our story. She reports "Vandalism is still a problem at Jenolan, even though we do our absolute best to prevent it."

Meanwhile she thought we would appreciate this poignant story.

"Here at Jenolan Caves, we received [in December 2014] a package in the post. In it, we found a 16cm long piece of sparkling crystal – a stalactite – thickly swaddled in Bubble Wrap. The accompanying letter revealed that it had been broken off by a visitor to Jenolan, two years previously. The sender apologised sincerely for the vandalism perpetrated by her daughter's irresponsible boyfriend, and she sent it back to us. The letter was signed 'A Mother Who Believes in Honesty.' "

"We were moved almost to tears, to think that someone cared enough to return the crystal to us."

Arriving at the Xmas-approaching time it did Jenolan staff thought of it as a Christmas present 5000 years old. That was the estimated time (although it might have been 10,000 years) it must have taken for it to grow to what it was when it was snapped off in a trice and pocketed by the erring whippersnapper boyfriend of the daughter of a mother who believed in honesty.

*Gisela Kaplan's Australian Magpie. Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird. CSIRO Publishing and UNSW Press.