Julien is totally staring because that's what's great about being able to make birdy-looking eyes appear just above his skin. You get to just look at things while maintaining steady normal eye contact. It also conveniently makes up for something he's found he doesn't like about being human-shaped compared to a giant bird; human vision is just really limited in a lot of ways, from color to speed of processing to a narrow field of view and the inability to see multiple things at once with any clarity.

"Makes sense! I'll have to do that." 'At a time like this'. Julien's smile is easy and never far from his face. It takes a wry aspect now. "Are there a lot of 'an intense thing happened so now we have a couple weeks to pull ourselves together' periods here, then?"