All this reminiscing about weird ways to make a living has your author recalling a sure-fire narrative to spin during job interviews. It’s a secret so powerful, using it will guarantee you a fast track to the C-suite in the global planet-destroying multinational corporation of your choice — so use it wisely.

And this is it: you need to position yourself as what the HR department calls a ‘lifelong learner.’ You’re never tired of learning. The job in question offers you exciting opportunities to learn. Learning gets you out of bed in the morning. You love your current job but you don’t feel you’re learning. In management speak, you live for the ‘learnings’.

Best of all is that technically you wouldn’t be lying! Aren’t we all always learning anyway? I mean, it would be pretty difficult to declare one day that the shop is shut and no new knowledge will be admitted. You’ll always have new challenges to overcome — in the new job, it starts your new network password. Day one and you’re learning already!

Now one of the underlying themes of this intermittent series of bloggings is, of course, everything we’ve learnt while exiled to our rural retreat. From gardening to Australian history to the infinite fascinations of platypuses, Braidwood has been a schoolroom of sorts — somewhat random, I’ll admit, but no less stimulating for that.

Of course, travel is one of the best ways of exciting our learning faculties, and this family has been fortunate to do a lot of it over the years. I just didn’t know it could also happen if you stayed in the same place for a few seasons.

Take today. Not a huge lesson, but fascinating in its own way. It is, of course, to do with birds. And joining the dots with something stashed away in the dim recesses of the memory.

In the 1915 spy novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan, a sinister member of the Black Stone spy ring is described as “an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk.” I always thought this ocular trope was poetic licence — a fiction to emphasise the man’s lack of humanity.

But then, today came an event I’d long wished for and worked on achieving. I finally managed to encounter one of those charismatic Sacred Kingfishers in a photogenic position: not too high up so the photos look weird; not silhouetted against a blank sky, but not deep in shadow either — just nicely lit by low-angle late-afternoon sunshine. And best of all, not startled into immediate flight by my presence.

The result was the kind of photos I’d longed to take: where you can see the details of its plumage, the dirt on its beak, its scaly toes gripping the branch.

And in these near-perfect conditions, it presented its eye — not only showing a very satisfying catchlight, which imbues the image with life and character, but even the differentiation of iris and pupil. And this is where today’s ‘learning’ came from — because on examining the pics later, it became clear that Buchan’s hawklike hooded eye is a very real natural phenomenon. And a quick consultation with Professor Google filled in the details.

Turns out all birds have a so-called ‘third eyelid’, the nictitating membrane, which slides sideways across the cornea like a curtain. This happens involuntarily, like blinking, to lubricate the eye and protect it when there’s danger. Raptors close this curtain when they attack, as damage to those incredible eyes would be an existential matter to them.

And get this — apparently, they can still see while this useful filter is in place over the eye — as through an organic contact lens. Extraordinary!

My sources tell me that raptors’ nictitating membranes are easier for us to see because they employ them more often than your run-of-the-mill birdie and because their eyes are large. And so it is for the kingfisher — itself a skilful hunter. Some of today’s photos show the third eyelid in place — and one or two even capture it in the process of sweeping across the cornea.

So Buchan’s creepy spy may not have literally been able to hood his eyes like a hawk — but the metaphor depicts the blank expression of his inward predatory disposition rather effectively. He is a cold, dangerous killer who is equipped by nature for his grisly profession.

Buchan’s novel is very short, but it spawned a sub-genre of action tales based on the hero isolated, on the run, drawing on personal grit and resourcefulness despite overwhelming odds, so he can Do the Right Thing. From Geoffrey Household to Robert Ludlum, it all goes back to Buchan. Tom Cruise and Matt Damon owe their careers to this guy.

And although his values of male stoicism and steely patriotism may be outmoded, the hero, Richard Hannay, is a man of his time: a jolly good chap with a steady, resourceful nature — a man of action. And, get this . . . he’s from that Athens of the bush, Bulawayo! (Well, Buchan says he worked as a mining engineer in Matabeleland, so I’m going to make that deduction.)

How interesting that Buchan drew on the colonies for a hero with quintessentially British virtues — but that’s how the Empire regarded its far-flung possessions in those days, I guess. Anyway, we digress. See how a random observation of one bird’s eyelid can take you off down the path of lifelong learning?