Eerily, things that definitely aren't there on the first three, four, five occasions you look at Bureaucratic Machine have snuck into it the next time you look. The Sydney Building in Civic definitely wasn't there in the morning but by late afternoon has slunk out from behind the glassy ApARTmentstower.

Dykgraaf's mad creation is a sort of signature work for the 100 Views of Canberra exhibition that has just opened at PhotoAccess at the Manuka Arts Centre.

We mustn't get too many tickets on ourselves in this centenary year but all leading theologians agree that Canberra is God's favoured Australian city. One proof they point to is that He, having created ''every winged fowl'' (Genesis 1:21), bestowed so many of them on the site of the federal capital of Australia. Canberra is the most (native) bird-blessed city in the world.

Two winged-fowl species that bless our city, the noisy friarbird and the gang-gang cockatoo, are celebrated in two exhibitions under way here.

When in your street you hear the sound of what's either the frenzied cackle of one of your neighbours driven mad by suburbia, or the frenzied cackle of a honeyeating bird, there is a 50/50 chance it is the frenzied cackle of the noisy friarbird.

Here is a new portrayal of that frenzied cackler. It's by Nicola Dickson. She explains that this is her elaboration of the painting of a friarbird by enthralled First Fleet seaman and illustrator George Raper. Look closely and you'll see that the bird is perched on the eyepiece of an octant, a contemporary navigational instrument well known to First Fleet seamen.

Dickson's works about native critters and the first Europeans to marvel at them are in her Frames of Reference exhibition at the M16 Artspace from Thursday until August 18.

Those who don't know any better look at gang-gang cockatoos (the emblem of this column and, less importantly, of the ACT) and think the female a plain, drab thing (in a kind of bird burka of grey feathers) next to the crimson-headed, crimson-crested male.

Look more closely though, as David Flannery has for this gosh!-making photograph, and you will see that the female of this species is exquisitely patterned and coloured, albeit with great subtlety. This photograph loses something of its lustre in print but you can see it in all its illustrious lustrousness at the Canberra Photographic Society 2013 annual exhibition. It is under way at the Watson Art Centre until August 11.

Narrabundah College media students' sometimes quirky, sometimes fond, sometimes mischievous ''Come To Canberra'' (in our centenary year) posters have proved very popular with readers. One making a virtue of there being no sharks in our lake (giving us an important tourism edge over shark-infested Sydney) was a ripper and it will disappoint if Canberra Tourism doesn't adopt it.

Another of great charm has a dog lover beside her sitting dog (putting an arm round its shaggy shoulders) to see what it is he or she is staring at, so fascinated. Creator Lucy Cassella explains, ''I am from the US and as you can imagine, Australia's landscapes are quite different … ''One of my favourite places in Canberra is Canberra Equestrian Centre, where the photo was taken. The scenery there is so uniquely Australian and different from anywhere else in the world. There is something so peaceful about being able to look around and not see any buildings or people … I took the photo of just my dog looking out over the landscape so that anyone could picture themselves within the photo.''