Wild Birds

I’m a very early riser - the first settler’s alarm clock you might say- If you haven’t heard my native name Wiradjuri guuguubarr- That’s OK you would know me as a Kookaburra. You’ll often hear me laughing with my kinsfolk from treetops to greet the morning Then at day’s end we bid it a fond goodbye- with a jovial, raucous chorus. You could mistake it for human laughter but it isn’t imitation- we’ve been laughing this way since the beginning of creation. I have a diet that will often make people shudder. I can eat a 3 foot snake and then go looking for another. I stun it first by dropping it — then whack it on a tree And then, believe me — I swallow it — carefully. I blend in well with the bushland bark brown and dappled shades You can’t see me in the gumtrees—that is until my laughter gives me away.