Bruny Youth Story Prize

Crack…crack...crack. I’m out! I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing. I look up and see a forty-spotted pardalote. It’s my mother. It starts raining, so I tip my head up. The water feels beautiful!

Three weeks later my mum is starting to push me out of my hollow. I am in the air! I look up at my mum - she looks confident. I start flapping my wings. I’m starting to fly! The wind against my face feels fresh. I fly for two minutes and then fly back to my nest to say goodbye to my mum. Once I’ve said goodbye I fly off into a different world. I can’t see any forty spotted pardalotes. They must all be in their hollows still. I look down and see Bennett’s wallabies and blue fairy wrens. It’s so lovely how I can just flap my wings and then go anywhere I like. At night I can hear different animal cries. Sometimes it’s a Tassie Devil and other times it’s the scuttling of a possum or the hoot of a Tawny Frogmouth. It’s a little bit lonely at night now that I’ve forgotten where my mum’s tree is. Sometimes I try to find it, but in never works. I’ve been trying to count how many times the sun sets at night. There is one unique call at night that sounds a little bit like mine. One night I went to follow it. When I got to the spot the sound was coming from, there was no bird there, only a hollow. I looked inside the hollow and I saw a girl forty-spotted pardalote. We fell in love!

Three years later we had eggs! Our son is three weeks old. We are pushing him out of our hollow. He is in the air! He looks up at us just like I did, and then he flies into a different world.
 

Winners of the Bruny Youth Story Prize will be announced at The Bruny Island Bird Festival on Sunday, the 22nd of March at 12 pm in the Adventure Bay hall. This prize is proudly brought to you by The Bruny Kids and Nature Project, led by Claire Boost and the Tasmanian Community Fund.