The Birds attempts to penetrate the visible object in order to reach the force behind/within it. The birds in Hitchcock’s classic film The Birds (1963) have been erased, frame-by-frame, leaving a trace of their existence. The trace, born out of the erasure of a physical object, still refers to that which once was, while there is an added anticipation of something else slipping through. Like phantom limbs, the trace is neither absence nor presence, past or present.