Phipson establishes Margaret's love of nature right off, sending her mooning to the pond on her father's Australian ranch--which she's unhappy about having to leave to visit her singer mother in England--and crashing, furious, into a pair of outlaws she finds netting the rare wild parrots of the area. A ranger tells her of the lucrative parrot-smuggling trade, and the rest is all in-flight suspense as Margaret finds, herself, en route to London, seated next to a tense older couple she's sure are transporting tranquilized birds. She's right--but who'd believe her without proof? And how to communicate with other passengers when the man, suspicious too, keeps such a (literally) tight grip on her? Though Margaret's intense ""caring"" for the birds gets to be a bore--one might agree with the crew member who suggests, after she's exposed the old couple, that she might have saved some of her pity for them--her mutual cat-and-mouse game with the smugglers makes for a breathlessly fast flight.