In the classic Hitchcock film The Birds, there is an early scene where the protagonist notices a raven standing on the metallic scaffolds of a children’s playground. Then a few other ebony harbingers float down to join the solitary raven to form a small but portentous murder.

Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses (for which he was given a fatwa in 1989 by ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, who publicly offered money for his murder), said with a wry smile in an interview about 9/11, ‘I was the first bird.