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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.
Copyright ©
Suzanne Delaney
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