Writing prompt: close encounters with birds
A friendly visitor to our picnic
Last week my wife and I went for a drive from our son’s home in Artarmon, Sydney, to Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park. We stopped in several places along the way and ended up at West Head Lookout. From here you can see over Broken Bay and some of the beaches and islands in that area.
At one point my wife was sitting on one of the seats admiring the view when her phone rang. It was her sister calling from South Australia. She was so distracted by the conversation that she didn’t notice our visitor, an Australian Brush-turkey (see photos). The turkey just casually wandered around us, merely a metre or so from us. It was a wonderful photo opportunity.
Writing prompts
I love having close encounters with birds and the natural world of animals. I’ve written many poems about birds.
- Write a poem about a close encounter you’ve had with a bird, animal or other creature.
- Include animals, birds and the natural environment in a short story.
- Relate an incident where you were surprised, frightened, amused or amazed by a close brush with a bird, reptile, fish, animal or some other creature.
Read more about Brush-turkeys:
Australian Brush-turkey, West Head, Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park
You should be careful of those West Head birds. They look on visitors as a natural resource. I was once there setting up lunch at a picnic table. We were going to have sausage sandwiches. I laid out some bread, put out the sausages and reached for the bread to go on top. Before I could even get the tomato sauce on it a brace of kookaburras had swooped across the picnic table and cleaned out our lunch.