Gang-gang. In this heatwave - time to think of backyard birds.

It is another of Stephen McMennamy's inspired combophotos. One we used last week showed an implausible creature part dog, part cauliflower. Today's more plausible McMennamy creation, part seabird part Boeing, seems to offer a surreal explanation of how so many birds achieve such amazing feats of flight.

See his work at the stimulating designboom website. http://designboom.com

With a few beats of our powerful wings we segue from surreal birds to real birds, to how much good we can do in this ferocious, roasting weather by supplying our backyard birds with baths and with drinking water.

After we mentioned in a recent column a conversation we had with a wise raven that visits one of our birdbaths, readers responded with birdbath news and ideas.

Just to usher in the topic; it is not only that we can do something St Francisesque for birds by giving them water but also that it brings us some lovely, selfish buzzes. The joy one gets from watching birds taking a splish-splash bath feels identical to the joy we get (it is said to be to do with mirror neurones) when we watch dogs romping on beaches. Providing bird baths can cost almost nothing (it is another of those best things in life, like the moon and the stars and choosing never to watch I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! or The Bachelorette, that are free) but in scorching weather it is a godsend for birds.

Birds suffer in extreme heat. To maximise your joy as a spectator put your bird baths where you can watch your clients using them, but please site them somewhere shady, and safe. It is not easy to think like a wild animal (though easier than trying to think like a Peter Dutton or a Jamie Briggs) but try to think like a backyard bird, to imagine what they would request from you if they could.

Dr Lyndal Thorburn refers us to Bathing Birds, http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/Bathing-Birds a report issued by the National Parks Association of NSW. The association joined with Birds in Backyards and the University of Sydney to run 'citizen science' surveys of birds bathing in backyard birdbaths in winter 2014 and summer 2015. There is a state by state summary of findings, including one for the uniquely bird-blessed ACT.

"We have been inspired as a result," Dr Thorburn reports, "and just last week set up two bird baths in sight of our dining table.

"One is a flat terracotta plate standing on an upturned pot, next to a [native] shrub that is flowering now and is frequented by Eastern Spinebills, thornbills and honeyeaters. We have seen a Yellow-faced Honeyeater drinking from it, and White-browed Scrubwrens bathing.

"The second is a plastic garbage bin lid that fits snugly (upside down of course) into a basketball hoop. We have had the hoop set aside to throw out for some years, and wouldn't you know, we needed it after all! This hoop is attached to a post just over 2m above the ground and also next to shrubbery ... We have seen Red Wattlebirds in it already. I am expecting that this bath will attract the larger birds because it is deeper and much higher off the ground."

We mention all this to stress that you don't need to spend a lot of money on designated bird baths. The birds won't care if you make unfashionable but better ones from things around the place. One of this columnist's best baths is an old enamel kitchen bowl plonked on top of a biggish terraccotta pot. Underemployed for many years as just an average fruit bowl the enamel artefact has turned out to be perfect as a one-Magpie-at-a-time spa.

Bird bath evangelists love too the ways different birds have different bathing styles. Magpies will get right in and wallow and splash for ever while Noisy Miners make quick, short, flying "bombs" like the ones urchins used to do at the Olympic Pool before that fun was banned.

And while on entertainments of the hot, Australian summer, there was a thought-kindling moment during the TV commentary for Saturday's women's match of the Hopman Cup final.

The Aussie female commentator, giving us some biographical background to the Ukraine's Elina Svitolina reported "She actually reads books!"

She told us this in the amazed tone of someone reporting something staggeringly strange about Ms Svitolina. That's like saying she is the reincarnation of the UK's Princess Diana or owes her athletic success to a diet of nothing but wild krill and farmed pomegranates.

Have we really come to this, dumbed-down Australia, (where even the National Gallery employs TV celebrities to make its art exhibitions seem sexier) that we think it a freakish thing for someone to read books?

This funny old columnist too reads books, and from that moment on Saturday in this Australia versus Ukraine match felt a kind of co-freak kinship with Ms Svitolina and barracked for her. The Aussie patriot next to me on the couch was not amused.

Perhaps it is because she is the only person on the tour who reads books that for intellectual companionship Ms Svitolina (pictured) seeks out the company of dolphins, a species reportedly far more intelligent than ours.