Karrick · Red-capped Robin · Illustration by Liz Daniljchenko
Conversations
With Birds
With Birds
conversationswithbirds.org
Development preview.
Incorrect password.
Each story comes in a Children's Read-Aloud and an Adult edition. Grounded in real ecology, told from the bird's perspective. Read the first chapter of Karrik's Twilight free.
Red-capped Robin (Petroica goodenovii) · Tambo Country, Queensland · © Borys Daniljchenko
Each story is a complete life — one bird, one week, one landscape — told in two voices.
Free Chapter
A nine-gram bird with the biggest voice in the woodland. Three eggs, a rival male, a Mulga Snake hunting by moonlight, and a fledgling's first flight. One week. Everything at stake.
New
11,000 km, nine days, no stops. What a Bar-tailed Godwit thinks about at 4am over the open Pacific — running on nothing but fat, feathers, and a magnetic map.
New
A Wedge-tailed Eagle reading the sky. The physics of soaring, the arithmetic of a territory, and one long day in the updrafts above a vast western Queensland landscape.
All three stories — robin, godwit, and eagle — in both Children's and Adult editions. Six books, three perspectives, one connected Australian landscape.
Printable field worksheets for children and adults. Recording templates for bird behaviour, habitat notes, and reflective journalling. Designed for use in the field.
School and community group licensing for all CWB stories and worksheets. Includes discussion guides, curriculum alignment notes, and permission to reproduce for classroom use.
Available in both Children's Read-Aloud and Adult editions. Same bird, same morning, two ways in.
The grass was all silver and sparkly. It was SO early in the morning that the sun hadn't even woken up yet. Everything was cold and still and quiet... well, almost quiet.
Somewhere in the dark, a tiny bird opened one eye. Then the other eye. He ruffled up all his feathers — frrrrrrffff — like a little feathery puffball trying to stay warm.
This was Karrik. And Karrik was very, very small. How small? He weighed about the same as two teaspoons of sugar. You could hold him in one hand and still have room for a biscuit. But don't let his size fool you — Karrik had the biggest voice in the whole woodland.
He flew up to the tallest dead branch he could find, puffed out his chest so his beautiful red cap caught the very first bit of light, and he sang:
Karrik
Tee-dee! Tee-dee! Tee-dee-dee-dee!
Which, in bird language, means something like: "This is MY patch! I'm HERE! And I'm not going ANYWHERE!"
Down below in a small cup-shaped nest tucked into a fork of a tree, Mirram — Karrik's wife — was sitting on three tiny eggs. She was greyish-brown, the colour of bark and shadows, which was very handy for hiding.
She heard Karrik singing and thought: "There he goes again. Every single morning." But she smiled a birdy smile. Because she knew what he was really saying was: "I'm watching out for you. You're safe."
And from somewhere where the trees were thickest:
Tawny Frogmouth
Ooom... ooom... ooom...
That was the Tawny Frogmouth, looking like a grumpy piece of tree bark with enormous orange eyes — getting ready for bed after a night of hunting.
"About time," thought Karrik. "One less thing to worry about." Because here's the thing about being a very small bird: everything is bigger than you.
When his tummy was full, Karrik flew to a branch near Mirram's nest. She turned one eye toward him — a long, warm look that meant: hello, you, I see you. He puffed himself up a tiny bit, because he always did when she looked at him like that.
And the gidgee woodland woke up around them, slowly, one bird at a time.
The Mitchell grass downs south of Tambo lay silver with frost. In the pre-dawn stillness, temperature had dropped to three degrees — cold enough to slow the metabolism of every ectotherm within reach of the ground, and cold enough to make a nine-gram bird press his feathers tight against a vertical trunk of gidgee.
Karrik opened one eye. The darkness was not absolute — a thin band of indigo lay along the eastern horizon, the first signal of nautical twilight. For a Red-capped Robin, this band of light carried information as precise as any clock. His pineal gland, nestled behind the thin bone of his skull, had already registered the shift. Melatonin production was falling. Corticosterone was rising. His body was waking before his mind had decided to.
He dropped from his roost trunk to a horizontal branch, shook vigorously — a full-body rouse that sent frost crystals scattering — and oriented east. Twenty-three minutes before sunrise. The crepuscular window was opening.
He flew to the highest dead branch in his territory — a song post he had used every morning for three breeding seasons — and delivered his territorial advertisement: a rapid, descending series of high-pitched notes that carried across two hectares of open woodland. The call served multiple functions simultaneously: declaring territory boundaries to rival males, confirming pair-bond status to Mirram on the nest below, and triggering responsive calls from neighbouring males that collectively mapped the social landscape of the woodland.
Thirty metres to the south, Mirram sat in a nest built from strips of bark and dried grass, bound with spider silk and decorated with flakes of lichen — disruptive camouflage that rendered it nearly invisible against the mottled bark of a gidgee fork. Beneath her brood patch, three pale blue-green eggs maintained a steady 37.5°C despite the freezing air.
By the time the sun cleared the horizon, Karrik had completed his first foraging bout and returned to a perch within sight of the nest. Mirram turned one eye toward him — a brief, silent exchange that carried the accumulated information of a pair-bond three seasons deep. The eggs were warm. The territory was secure. The day's first hunting window had been profitable.
Red-capped Robin (Petroica goodenovii) · Tambo Country, Queensland · © Borys Daniljchenko
Stories are delivered as digital downloads through Payhip, an independent UK publishing platform.
Browse titles above and select what you'd like. Each story is available individually or as a bundle. Both editions are included in every purchase.
Choose PayPal or credit/debit card via Stripe. Payhip never stores your card details. All transactions 256-bit SSL encrypted.
Files are available immediately after payment — no waiting, no shipping. Your download link is reusable at any time.
Story purchase buttons currently show "Available Soon" — the Payhip storefront is being set up. Notify me when available →
