birds creative writing examples

How to Describe Birds in Writing (17 Best Tips & Examples)

Let’s spread our creative wings together and explore the art of describing birds in our writing.

Here is how to describe birds in writing:

Describe birds in writing by focusing on their feathers, songs, movements, and behaviors. Use vivid words like “iridescent” or phrases like “wings slicing the air”. Employ sensory descriptions, symbolic meanings, and cultural contexts to bring avian characters to life in your narratives.

Keep reading to learn everything you need to know to write about birds in your stories.

Types of Birds in Writing

Colorful parrot image for a blog post about how to describe birds in writing

Table of Contents

Birds, with their vast diversity and striking characteristics, offer a rich palette for writers to paint vibrant scenes and convey emotions.

From tiny, flitting hummingbirds to majestic eagles soaring high, each bird carries its own symbolism and narrative potential.

In this section, we’ll explore a variety of bird types, each with a brief description that captures their essence, providing a broad canvas for writers to draw inspiration from.

Sparrows – Small and unassuming, sparrows symbolize simplicity and the joy found in everyday life.
Eagles – Majestic and powerful, eagles are often used to depict freedom, strength, and a bird’s-eye perspective on life.
Hummingbirds – Tiny and energetic, hummingbirds represent joy, agility, and the incredible beauty of small things.
Owls – Mysterious and wise, owls often symbolize knowledge, the unseen, and the secrets of the night.
Robins – Cheerful and common, robins are harbingers of spring and symbols of renewal and new beginnings.
Peacocks – Vibrant and flamboyant, peacocks epitomize beauty, pride, and the splendor of nature.
Crows – Intelligent and adaptable, crows often represent transformation, adaptability, and the mysteries of life.
Pigeons – Ubiquitous and resilient, pigeons are seen as symbols of peace, love, and the persistence of life in urban landscapes.
Swans – Graceful and elegant, swans are often used to represent love, purity, and the beauty of monogamy.
Canaries – Bright and vocal, canaries symbolize happiness, the power of voice, and sometimes, a warning.
Penguins – Endearing and unique, penguins represent adaptability, survival, and the joys of companionship.
Flamingos – Striking and social, flamingos symbolize balance, community, and embracing one’s uniqueness.
Parrots – Colorful and vocal, parrots often stand for communication, mimicry, and the vibrancy of the tropics.
Vultures – Misunderstood scavengers, vultures symbolize cleansing, renewal, and the cycle of life.
Doves – Gentle and serene, doves are universally recognized as emblems of peace, hope, and spiritual messengers.
Hawks – Focused and fierce, hawks represent vision, power, and the ability to navigate life’s challenges.
Seagulls – Noisy and free-spirited, seagulls embody the spirit of the sea, freedom, and a carefree lifestyle.
Woodpeckers – Persistent and rhythmic, woodpeckers symbolize determination, opportunity, and the heartbeat of the forest.
Cardinals – Vibrant and spirited, cardinals represent vitality, faith, and the beauty of year-round color.
Blue Jays – Bold and vocal, blue jays symbolize assertiveness, intelligence, and the vibrancy of life.

17 Best Tips for Describing Birds in Writing

Describing birds in your writing can be a mesmerizing way to add depth, texture, and symbolism.

Whether it’s the delicate flutter of a sparrow or the majestic soar of an eagle, birds can bring a unique dimension to your narrative.

Here are 17 bird-themed tips to help you weave vivid avian imagery into your writing.

Each tip is explored in detail, offering you the tools to make your descriptions take flight.

1. Feathered Flourish – Focus on Feathers

Feathers define birds. When describing them, delve into their color, texture, and what they reveal about the bird’s persona.

For example, depicting a sparrow’s feathers could go beyond mere color.

You might say, “The sparrow’s feathers seemed brushed by twilight; each a small canvas capturing the soft glow of the setting sun.”

This not only paints a vivid picture but also introduces a sensory aspect.

It links the bird to the broader canvas of the natural world, allowing readers to feel the warmth, see the hues, and sense the bird’s place in the world.

This attention to detail can turn a simple description into an evocative image that stays with the reader.

2. Melodic Metaphors – Use Birdsong

Birdsong is more than a sound; it’s an emotion.

When describing it, use metaphors and similes to create an emotional connection.

Rather than saying a robin chirps, you might describe its song as “a melody rippling like a gentle brook, cutting through the quiet of dawn.”

This method transcends mere auditory description.

It paints a picture, sets a mood, and plunges the reader into a moment.

It’s about crafting a scene that’s almost palpable, using the bird’s song as a tool to transport the reader to that tranquil morning, where they can almost feel the coolness of the dawn and the serenity it brings.

3. Winged Whimsy – Capture Movement

A bird’s movement can be highly expressive.

Whether it’s an eagle’s dignified glide or a hummingbird’s frenetic dance, capturing this can add dynamism to your writing.

Consider a description like, “The hummingbird hovered in the air, its wings a blur, as if stitching the very fabric of time.”

This kind of imagery does more than describe movement.

It infuses the bird with a magical quality, making it a creature not just of feathers and flight but of wonder and fantasy.

Descriptions like this elevate the bird from a mere creature to a symbol, a bearer of meaning, and an entity that transcends the ordinary.

4. Aerial Acrobatics – Highlight Flight Patterns

Flight patterns can reveal a lot about a bird’s nature and the mood of a scene.

For instance, describing an eagle’s flight can convey majesty and power.

You might write, “The eagle ascended with a regal ease, each wingbeat a testament to its dominion over the skies.”

This goes beyond the physical act of flying. It touches on the eagle’s symbolic power, portraying it as a ruler of its realm.

It’s about capturing the grace, the strength, and the sheer majesty of its flight.

Descriptions like these can elevate your narrative, turning a simple action into a powerful metaphor that reflects broader themes or emotions in your writing.

5. Nest Narratives – Describe Bird Habitats

Bird habitats can set the scene and context for your narrative.

Describing a nest, a tree hollow, or even a cliff ledge can add authenticity.

You could say, “The sparrow’s nest, a woven tapestry of twigs and leaves, cradled the tree’s nook, a testament to nature’s ingenuity.”

This type of description does more than just portray a physical location.

It gives insight into the bird’s life and survival.

It can create a sense of intimacy, pulling the reader closer to the bird’s world, and highlighting the intricate connections between creatures and their environments.

6. Beak Banter – Focus on Vocalizations and Calls

Bird calls and vocalizations can be very expressive.

Describing these can add auditory texture to your writing. For example, instead of just stating a crow cawed, you could write, “The crow’s call was a harsh caw, echoing like a laugh across the empty fields.”

This captures the nature of the sound and its impact on the setting.

It’s not just about what the sound is, but how it resonates with the environment and the characters.

It can set a mood, be it ominous, cheerful, or soothing.

The key is to use these sounds not just as background noise, but as active elements that contribute to the atmosphere of your scene.

7. Plumage Palette – Explore Colors and Patterns

The colors and patterns of a bird’s plumage can be striking.

Describing these can add visual vibrancy to your narrative.

Take a peacock for example. Instead of simply stating its feathers are colorful, try, “The peacock’s tail unfurled like a kaleidoscopic fan, each feather a vibrant brushstroke of nature’s palette.”

This kind of description paints a vivid picture.

It turns the bird into a living work of art, inviting readers to visualize not just the colors, but the beauty and intricacy of the patterns.

It’s about capturing the awe and wonder such a sight can evoke, making the reader pause and appreciate the natural splendor.

8. Avian Antics – Capture Characterful Behavior

Birds often display unique and characterful behaviors that can enliven your writing.

Describing these antics provides insight into their personalities.

For example, a raven solving a puzzle or a bowerbird decorating its nest demonstrates intelligence and resourcefulness.

Writing such as, “The raven, with a click of its beak, nudged the puzzle piece into place, its black eyes glinting with a hint of glee,” invites readers into the bird’s world.

It’s about painting a fuller picture, showcasing birds not just as animals but as beings with their quirks, habits, and intelligence.

By bringing these behaviors to the fore, you can add another layer to your narrative and engage your readers on a deeper level.

9. Sensory Symphony – Engage All Senses

Engaging all the senses can make your bird descriptions more immersive.

Describe not just how a bird looks, but how its feathers feel, how its movement sounds, or even how its habitat smells.

For instance, “The duck’s feathers were a tapestry of textures, from the silkiness of its undercoat to the oil-slicked toughness of its outer quills.”

By involving multiple senses, you can create a richer, multi-dimensional portrayal of birds.

It’s about giving the reader a sense as if they’re experiencing the bird’s presence firsthand, making the encounter with the bird more vivid and memorable.

10. Behavioral Beacon – Signal Seasonal Changes

Bird behaviors often change with the seasons, and this can be a poignant aspect to capture.

Migratory patterns, mating dances, or nesting can signal the passage of time in your story.

Describing these seasonal behaviors, like “With the first blush of spring, the robin returned, its song a cheerful herald of warmer days,” can add layers of depth to your setting.

It aligns the life of birds with the rhythm of the natural world, providing a backdrop that can reflect changes in your story or the internal states of your characters.

11. Symbolic Soaring – Use Birds as Symbols

Birds have rich symbolic meanings across cultures.

They can symbolize freedom, hope, or even foreboding. Integrate these symbols into your writing to add a layer of meaning.

For example, an owl in a story might not only be a background creature but also a symbol of wisdom or a harbinger of change.

“The owl perched silently above, its presence a solemn reminder of the wisdom that comes with age and experience,” illustrates how you can weave symbolism into your description.

This allows the bird to embody deeper themes and resonate with the reader on a symbolic level.

12. Dynamic Duos – Contrast with Characters

Use birds to create contrast or to mirror your characters’ journeys.

A caged bird can reflect a character’s own trapped situation or desire for freedom.

For example, “As she watched the caged finch flutter against the bars, its plight echoed her own sense of confinement.”

This approach does more than depict the bird; it uses the bird as a reflection of the character’s emotions and circumstances, offering a powerful emotional connection and a mirror to human experiences.

13. Rhythmic Renderings – Mimic Bird Movement in Prose

The rhythm of your prose can reflect the movement of birds.

Long, flowing sentences can mimic the graceful soaring of a swan, while short, choppy sentences can echo the flitting of a finch.

For instance, “The heron glided over the water—a slow, seamless waltz—its reflection a ghostly dance partner below.”

By mirroring the rhythm of bird movements in your sentence structure, you provide the reader with a literary echo of the bird’s physical grace.

This creates a harmonious reading experience that’s almost like watching the bird in motion.

14. Habitat Harmony – Align Descriptions with Environment

Birds are deeply connected to their habitats, and reflecting this in your descriptions can add authenticity.

Describe how a bird interacts with its environment, like a woodpecker tapping into a tree or a seagull wheeling over the ocean.

You might write, “The woodpecker drummed against the old oak, a staccato rhythm that seemed to breathe life into the forest.”

Such descriptions root the bird in its setting, giving a sense of place and showing the interconnectedness of nature’s tapestry.

15. Perspective Play – Vary Your Viewpoint

Changing your narrative perspective can offer a fresh angle on bird descriptions.

Describe a bird from far away, then up close, or even from the bird’s perspective. For example, “From afar, the hawk was a mere speck against the vast blue. Up close, every feather was a detail in a masterpiece of evolution.”

This technique can add depth and scale to your descriptions, offering a richer visual experience and drawing readers into the scene more effectively.

16. Emotional Echo – Reflect Mood through Birds

Birds can be used to echo the emotional landscape of your story.

A joyful scene might be accompanied by the lively chatter of sparrows, while a somber moment could be underscored by the solitary call of a crow.

Writing that “The crows’ solemn cries seemed to mourn the day’s end, as shadows gathered in the silence,” can tie the atmosphere closely to the narrative, using the birds to deepen the emotional impact of your scenes.

17. Cultural Context – Weave in Folklore and Myth

Birds often have a place in folklore and myth, and tapping into these stories can add a layer of richness to your writing.

Integrate cultural stories or myths about birds to give your descriptions a deeper resonance.

“The raven, long a harbinger of fate in local lore, watched from atop the church spire, its black eyes knowing.”

This not only gives your bird descriptions a more profound significance but also ties them to the cultural and historical context of your setting.

Check out this video about how to describe birds in writing:

30 Best Words to Describe a Bird in Writing

Here are 30 of the best words to talk about birds in writing.

Plumage-rich
Resplendent

Each of these words holds the power to conjure a specific image or feeling about birds.

Use them to craft descriptions with precision and emotion.

Moving beyond single words, crafting phrases that reflect the nuanced behaviors and attributes of birds can add an evocative layer to your writing.

30 Best Phrases to Describe a Bird in Writing

The following phrases blend imagery and emotion, ideal for enhancing your narratives with finely-tuned bird descriptions:

Wings slicing the air
Beak glistening at dawn
Tail feathers fanning out like rays of the sun
Eyes gleaming with intelligence
Song piercing the morning haze
Silhouette against the twilight sky
Claws gripping the branch with silent authority
Nest cradled in the crook of a tree
Feathers ruffled by the whispering wind
Shadow flitting across the ground
Plumage blending with the autumn leaves
Beating wings stirring the calm air
Calls echoing in the forest canopy
Flight cutting through the mist
Dance of courtship, intricate and full of zeal
Reflection skimming the surface of the lake
Perched like a sentinel atop the old pine
Darting through the underbrush
A flash of color in the verdant meadow
Aloft in the updraft, effortlessly suspended
A symphony of calls at dusk
The soft cooing at day’s end
Feathers coated in the morning’s dew
A swift chase over the water’s surface
Migratory arc etched across the sky
Preening meticulously, every feather an artifact
The sudden stillness before the strike
A solitary silhouette on a weathered fence post
Inquisitive gaze from within the thicket
The serene float on a tranquil pond

3 Examples of How to Describe Birds in Writing (in three Different Genres)

Let’s look at examples of how to describe birds in writing in different kinds of stories.

Fantasy Genre: The Enchanted Eagle

In the twilight-shrouded realm of Eldoria, the Great Eagle, guardian of the Whispering Woods, unfurled its shimmering wings. Each feather shimmered with ethereal light, casting prismatic glows against the gnarled branches of the ancient trees. With eyes like molten gold piercing through the dusk, the creature let out a call that sang of ancient magic and secrets untold. Its talons, relics of a bygone era, grasped the mystical Stone of Sight, which pulsed in harmony with its heartbeat. The Eagle soared upwards, the air around it alive with whispers of enchantment, its majestic form a silhouette against the canvas of the constellations.

Mystery Genre: The Clue of the Crimson Cardinal

Detective Lila Grey stood motionless, the crunch of the autumn leaves underfoot breaking the silence of the morning. Her gaze fixed on the flash of red that flitted above the crime scene—a cardinal, its vibrant plumage a stark contrast to the somber mood. The bird’s keen eyes seemed to scrutinize the area, darting from the body to the blood-stained note left behind. As it sang a trilling melody, Lila pondered if the cardinal was an unwitting witness to the misdeed. The way it circled, almost protectively, around the oak tree, hinted at a secret only this avian bystander knew.

Romance Genre: The Dance of the Doves

Amidst the gentle hum of the garden party, two doves cooed softly, their gentle ballet a mirror to Eleanor and Thomas’s newfound love. The birds, with their silken white feathers, glided side by side, wings almost touching, embodying the tenderness shared between the two hearts below. As the pair nuzzled beak to beak, so too did Eleanor and Thomas lean in for their first, shy kiss, their audience of doves bearing witness to the silent promise of enduring affection. In the soft glow of dusk, the lovers and doves alike were wrapped in the warm embrace of a love as pure as the driven snow.

Final Thoughts: How to Describe Birds in Writing

With feathers unfurled and tales told, remember that the sky’s the limit when describing our avian friends in writing.

And if this flight of fancy has your creativity soaring, wing your way through our trove of articles for more literary inspiration.

25 Creative Writing Prompts About Birds

If you’re looking for creative writing prompts about birds, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve got dozens of ideas for you to use in stories, poems, journaling, essays, and more. Read on to learn more.

There are reasons games like Angry Birds have become cultural icons. Typically, it’s because people are fascinated by the idea of winged creatures soaring in the sky above us. Yeppers! Birds are a fascinating topic for anyone and kids seem to especially love them.

Now, learning to write about birds can help aspiring writers in many ways.

Let’s take a look quickly at some of the top reasons why writing about birds is so wonderful. And then I’ll share with you some writing prompts about birds. You see…

Writing about birds can help a writer expand their vocabulary in new ways. Pro tip: Google the phrase “bird vocabulary words”.

Additionally….

Writers can use birds as characters in fictional pieces. After all, who doesn’t like reading a story about a penguin waddling through the snow trying to find its parents?

Further, writers may choose to use birds in their stories for allegorical purposes. In other words, birds may be used as symbolism in various ways in story writing.

For instance, some writers will will use birds chirping loudly to signal the start of something promising. Likewise, others may opt to describe the sky as being filled with crows as they depict something ominous in their writing. These are just two of the endless ways birds may be used to enhance one’s story in new and interesting ways.

Whether you’re writing poems, notebook entries, or short stories about birds, these prompts will help you considerably. Take a look now and enjoy!

Write an exchange between a talking parrot and a pirate captain.

A family of birds is migrating when a strong gust of wind knocks the baby bird out of the sky. Write a story about the little bird searching for and reuniting with its family. (You could use famous movies like Finding Nemo as inspiration.)

Write a story about a high school student whose best friend is a talking owl.

Develop a story around an owl leaving its nest at night to go on an adventure.

Base a story around a group of penguins in Antarctica having an underwater swimming contest.

Write and dedicate a poem to your favorite bird species.

Explain in detail which species of large birds you like the most and why.

Write a story about an a character you create partnering with a large eagle to find hidden treasures in the Caribbean.

Explain why kids are typically so fascinated by birds.

You find an injured bird in your backyard. How do you help it?

Let your creative juices flow by imagining and penning a conversation between a group of frogs and a falcon.

What would your wings look like if you could snap your fingers and turn into a bird at will?

You’re playing in the schoolyard when you find golden feathers. What do you do?

You’re swimming in the ocean with your friends when you notice a crow dive down for a closer look. What happens next?

You feed a bird some food and thereafter it keeps following you everywhere. You bring it home, but your mom says you can’t keep the bird. How do you convince her to change her mind?

Write some story ideas in your notebook about a bird that has lost its happiness and must regain it.

You’re trekking in the forest when you get lost. Suddenly, the wise old owl starts talking, startling you. Continue this prompt idea.

You’re swimming in the ocean. You see thousands of birds flocking to the coast. Write about what you think is attracting the birds.

A pigeon enters the king’s castle with a small note tied to its leg. It has a very important message. What does it say?

The world’s richest man invites you to his headquarters. He says he can create a jetpack to let you fly like your favorite bird. Which bird do you choose?

Write a journal entry about feeling as free as a bird.

Detail a bird’s journey as it migrates during the winter.

A pigeon flies into a bakery and sneakily eats the baker’s bread. Write a story about the pigeon avoiding detection.

You’re in your local park when you find a dozen unhatched eggs. They’re the size of your head. Suddenly, you hear a sound. Continue this prompt.

Imagine you’re a sparrow who is best friends with an eagle. Write a story about your friendship.

I hope you enjoyed our list of creative writing prompts about birds.

Now, check out these…

Fabulous Writing Resources

47 Free Ocean Writing Ideas to Inspire
34 Nature Writing Prompts for Kids
15 Writing Prompts about Pets
44 Unique Ideas for Creative Writing About Dogs

Ok, that’s all for today.

Until next time, write on…

If you enjoyed these Writing Prompts about Birds … please share them on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Pinterest. I appreciate it!

Sincerely, Jill journalbuddies.com creator and curator

PS – take a look at the 10 Best Children’s Books About Birds !

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25 Writing Prompts About Birds

Ever watch a bird soar through the sky and think, “Man, I wish I could be that free?”

Well, maybe you can’t sprout wings yourself, but you can definitely capture that feeling of freedom – on paper!

Birds are fascinating creatures, from the tiniest hummingbird to the majestic eagle.

They’ve inspired artists and storytellers for centuries, and guess what?

They can inspire you too.

Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting out, these bird-themed prompts are sure to spark your imagination and get those creative juices flowing.

So grab your notebook, settle in for a comfy writing session, and let’s take flight!

25 Writing Prompts about Birds

An unexpected friendship: Imagine a world where humans have the ability to understand and converse with birds. One day, a young girl befriends a rare bird species which leads her into a path of environmental activism. In your story, explore the development of this unique friendship and how it impacts the young girl’s life and the environment around her.

The silent city: In a bustling city that never sleeps, suddenly all the birds vanish. The once vibrant mornings are now eerily quiet, and people start to notice the absence of their feathered friends. Your task is to delve into the mystery of the disappearing birds and reveal the underlying reason behind this phenomenon.

Memoirs of a migratory bird: Write a story from the perspective of a migratory bird on its first journey across continents. Experience the challenges, the beauty of diverse landscapes, interactions with different species, and the instinctual drive to reach a destination. Your focus should be on the internal and external journey of this migratory bird and how it perceives the world.

The last song of the extinct bird: In a future where a specific bird species has gone extinct, scientists discover a way to recreate their song through pieced-together recordings. This song sparks an emotional reaction worldwide. Your narrative should revolve around the global impact of this last song and how it influences decisions related to conservation.

The Birdman: Consider a story about a lonely man known as the “Birdman” who has the uncanny ability to heal injured birds. His quiet life is upended when a corporation threatens his home, a sanctuary for his avian friends. Examine the struggle between the Birdman’s fight for his friends and the corporate world’s indifference to nature.

Bird-watcher’s discovery: A veteran bird-watcher in a small town stumbles upon a bird species never seen before. This discovery could potentially change the town’s quiet life and bring in scientists, media, and tourists. Your task is to tell the story of this sudden change and how the bird-watcher and townspeople react to it.

The Avian Rebellion: In a dystopian world where humans have become overly dependent on advanced technology, birds suddenly begin to exhibit unusual intelligence and seem to be rebelling against human activities. Craft a narrative around these events, shedding light on the consequences of our reliance on technology and the birds’ fight for survival.

The message carrier: A story set during the time of war where all modern communication methods are inaccessible. A soldier, stranded behind enemy lines, relies on a trained carrier pigeon to deliver a message that could save thousands of lives. Your narrative should focus on the incredible journey of this bird and the suspense around whether it will successfully deliver the message.

The Bird Whistleblower : Picture a corporate employee who, on her daily park visits, starts communicating with a bird. This bird reveals to her secrets about illegal corporate activities harming the environment. Craft a narrative surrounding how she becomes an unlikely whistleblower, using the information given by her avian informant.

The Unheard Chirps : A child has the extraordinary ability to hear frequencies of sound that others can’t. One day, he starts hearing the faint chirps of a bird species thought to be silent. Your task is to elaborate on how this child’s ability affects his life and could potentially rewrite ornithological books.

The Secret Language of Birds : In a world where every bird species speaks a unique and sophisticated language, one scientist makes it her life’s work to understand and document these languages. Your story should explore her arduous journey of learning and the profound knowledge she gains from these feathered creatures.

The Bird that Saw the Future : A mystical bird in a small rural community is believed to possess the power to foresee the future. Its peculiar behaviors and routines are interpreted as omens. Your narrative should focus on how the bird’s predictions influence the behaviors and beliefs of the community.

The Lost Parrot : A parrot who has traveled with a nomadic tribe for generations goes missing. The tribe believes that their fortunes are tied to the parrot and embark on a journey to find it. Write a story about this extraordinary journey, illustrating the deep connection between the tribe and the bird.

The Cursed Crow : A series of unfortunate events befall a town, seemingly triggered by the arrival of a solitary crow. The townsfolk are quick to label the crow as cursed, but a wise old woman suspects there’s more to the story. Explore the truth behind the “cursed crow” and the town’s superstitious beliefs.

The Bird Photographer’s Dilemma : An award-winning wildlife photographer is on a mission to capture the perfect shot of a rare bird. However, she must face the moral dilemma of prioritizing the bird’s welfare over achieving her goal. Your task is to delve into this dilemma and the consequences of her decision.

The Swallow’s Nest : A swallow builds its nest every year in the eaves of an old, abandoned house. When the house is slated for demolition, a young boy takes it upon himself to save the bird’s home. Write about the boy’s campaign to save the swallow’s nest and the impact of his actions on his community.

The Bird of Paradise : In a remote tropical island, a rare bird of paradise is believed to possess magical healing properties. A pharmaceutical company learns about this and tries to capture the bird for its research. Your story should focus on the local community’s effort to protect this sacred bird and their homeland from exploitation.

Bird’s Eye View : An adventure-loving bird has the unique ability to transmit what it sees to a young girl’s dreams, giving her an exciting view of the world from the skies. However, one day, the bird witnesses a crime. Your story should focus on how the girl uses these dream-visions to solve the crime.

The Hummingbird’s Garden : A hummingbird finds a once-lush garden now dying due to negligence. The bird decides to rejuvenate the garden and rally other creatures in this effort. Your story should narrate the challenges the hummingbird faces and how this mission brings the garden’s inhabitants together.

The Falconer’s Legacy : The last falconer in a rural village is eager to pass on his legacy to the new generation. However, he struggles to convince the young people about the importance of this ancient practice in the age of technology. Craft a narrative highlighting the falconer’s struggle to preserve tradition in a rapidly changing world.

Echo the Mockingbird : A mockingbird named Echo has the uncanny ability to mimic any sound it hears. One day, Echo starts mimicking the whispered secrets of the townsfolk, leading to chaos. Your task is to narrate this humorous and chaotic scenario, while also unraveling the deeper impacts of uncovered secrets.

The Owl’s Wisdom : An old owl is regarded as the wise elder in a forest community. When a natural disaster threatens their home, the owl must use its wisdom to lead them to safety. Your story should focus on the owl’s leadership and the various animal characters’ roles in this crisis.

The Last Flamingo : In a world ravaged by climate change, a single flamingo’s appearance in a northern city becomes a global sensation. Write a narrative about the various interpretations and reactions this event evokes, underscoring the urgent issue of climate change.

The Phoenix Rising : A small, fire-ravaged town adopts the mythical Phoenix as a symbol of their resilience. A mysterious, fiery bird’s appearance just as the town is rebuilding sparks hope among the residents. Your story should encapsulate the power of hope and symbolism in the face of adversity.

The Peacock’s Pride : A proud peacock, known for its splendid display, loses its vibrant feathers due to an illness. Write a tale about the peacock’s journey of overcoming its vanity, rediscovering its worth beyond physical beauty, and inspiring others in its community.

Founder and Chief Content Curator @ Digital Phrases

I'm a writer, words are my superpower, and storytelling is my kryptonite.

How to Write an Essay on Birds: 9 Interesting Areas to Focus

How to write an essay on birds? There are some interesting facts you can write about. Information about birds can be an excellent source for a creative essay. Birds are found in every part of the globe, creating a large variety of species to write about, especially when well-researched. Interesting bird facts can create wonderful topics for an essay, including unique theses that a student can explore and develop an enjoyable piece of writing.

When writing an essay about birds, it’s important to consider researching these facts, especially their biological composition. For instance, one can write an essay about birds by highlighting some distinguishing characteristics between bird species. This type of writing would be most interesting in English, particularly due to the distinctive nature of scientific descriptions. You can also include a short note about their biological differences in each section to make the essay more appealing.

Interesting Facts for Writing an Essay on Birds

Feather distinction.

One of the most interesting topics for an essay on birds is their feather diversity. Birds have distinctive appearances in structure, order, and color. Feather distinction is one of the distinguishing characteristics between species. However, some species have different colors based on various biological and environmental factors. For instance, some bird species have distinctive differences between the feathers of a male and a female. In other cases, the differences may appear disorderly but are worth investigating.

Migration marvels and global distribution

Some bird species are migratory, traveling between regions, even continents. Since the migrations coincide with seasons, they create some migration marvels worth writing about. For instance, seagulls migrate between winter and summer, running from the cold weather. During their travels, the birds create awesome displays of their traveling routines, mating habits, and hunting traditions. This topic is most suitable for nature lovers, people willing to investigate many species for their beauty and scientific facts.

Nesting prowess

You can also write an essay on birds based on their architectural techniques. Birds build their nests differently depending on their size, primary predators, and location. While the weaverbird prefers loosely hanging tree branches, the penguin can only nest on the ground near mountains and ocean shores. The structure and composition of the nest also differ significantly, creating an array of architectural designs to compare. Any person interested in birds understands the importance of a nest, especially during mating and incubation.

Egg laying facts

Birds are oviparous or egg-laying animals in English. Different species lay different egg sizes, colors, and shapes. They have distinctive characteristics based on their egg-laying habits, including location and responsibility. Some birds, such as the Cuckoo , exhibit parasitic behaviors in brooding. They lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, forcing the foster parents to incubate a foreign egg and feed an adopted chick afterward. Egg-laying habits can be quite an impressive topic for an essay on birds, especially due to the amount of scientific evidence available online.

Sociocultural rituals

Another interesting concept you can write about birds is their social lives. Like humans and any other living thing, birds socialize on different occasions. Some live in large groups, while others are loaners. However, all birds have distinctive mating rituals. Some specials engage in colorful, elaborate courtship traditions. They display marvelous moves to attract mates, using their wings and, in some cases, their avian architectural prowess to assert dominance. Birds engage in long relationships that resemble marriage in humans. The bald eagle is a good example of a bird species that marries or mates for life. The differences in sociocultural behaviors can create an amazing topic for a good essay.

Cognitive capacity

Some bird species are worth writing essays about, especially those that have shown high intelligence. Students can investigate intellectual abilities in birds to find impressive topics for their term papers and final research. You can even hire an experienced academic writer to help with the information gathering and drafting. For instance, CustomWritings professional essay writing service is a prominent helper with over ten years of experience supporting students’ journeys. While intelligent avian is attractive, finding accurate and reliable supporting evidence on such a topic can be daunting. With professional assistance, you can access scholarly articles and integrate findings from research in your essay on birds.

Vocal abilities

Birds are also known for their vocalization capabilities. While students cannot transcribe bird songs into writing, investigations into singing abilities can constitute a good essay. Most importantly, one can research birds’ ability to vocalize or mimic different sounds. Some bird species are known for their vocalization, especially when imitating humans and other birds. Others can produce relatively unique sounds, making them an attractive piece of marvel for analysis.

Scholars and researchers tend to focus on the biological differences between birds. Notably, biologists have invested significantly in understanding the genetic differences for classification and knowledge gathering. With this information, students can develop exciting topics for their essays or end-term research papers. Another interesting point of focus is the survival instincts and abilities of birds. While some species rely on camouflage for safety, others are birds of prey. The details about each bird’s genetics can help explain distribution and preferences.

Life expectancy

Similarly, the biological differences explain the differences in life expectancy. It’s difficult to ascertain the length of life in wild birds due to constant migration. However, scientific evidence suggests that some birds live longer than others. A good essay writer would consider analyzing the reasoning behind these differences and identify genetic and environmental characteristics affecting the length of life.

How Do I Write an Essay on Birds?

The best approach for writing an essay on birds involves conducting sufficient research. A good student would start by identifying an interesting fact to write about birds and research it. The information gathered from the knowledge search can then be used to create a comprehensive essay topic with a compelling thesis. The interesting facts about birds can also be a good hook for the introduction. The essay on birds should be organized professionally, adopting a basic paper structure with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Writing an essay on birds should also incorporate scientific and scholarly evidence. A good writer understands the need to integrate external sources with supporting and counterarguments. This approach will make your essay more interesting to read and easy to grade. Your professor may be impressed by your capacity to research a wild topic and investigate evidence found in scholarly works. Besides, supporting your arguments with reliable and verifiable arguments makes your writing believable. You can also impress the reader with ideas corroborating your knowledge of birds. For instance, you can integrate information about mating in an essay about birds’ vocal abilities to demonstrate a connection between the two issues. In the end, your essay about birds should be compelling and informative.

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

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46 Comments

I adore birds. I have a feeder on my back deck just outside my dining room window. It attracts blue jays, wrens, cardinals, titmouses, chickadees, and gold finches. Watching them fly in to grab a nibble then fly away is a delight. Sometimes they take a rest on the crook that holds the feeder and spend a few moments primping and preening in the sun. There is something soothing and fulfilling about watching them. I think of their evolutionary orgin and enjoy the notion that I have dinosaurs on my back deck.

Dinosaurs on your deck? What a wild idea.

I adore birds. I have a feeder on my back deck just outside my dining room window. It attracts blue jays, wrens, cardinals, titmouses, chickadees, and gold finches. Watching them fly in to grab a nibble then fly away is a delight. Sometimes they take a rest on the crook that holds the feeder and spend a few moments primping and preening in the sun. There is something soothing and fulfilling about watching them. I think of their evolutionalry orgin and enjoy the notion that I have dinosaurs on my back deck.

I love how birds just do their thing. All day long. Yesterday it was windy and when I left I saw three large birds, likely hawks, who were just playing in the gusts of wind. They hung in the sky with their wings open, nearly motionless, and then suddenly one would dive towards the earth, only to pull back up at the last second and loop around and join his friends again in the wind currents. All of this activity and it seemed effortless. He must have taken 3 flaps with his wings. Beautiful.

Mmm… that sounds beautiful.

Joe! Your blog is great. I’m going to start doing the exercises and posting what I write. Sooo here’s the one from today!

It’s about 10:30am and I’m sitting at a picnic table on Gainesville college’s campus looking for birds. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with birds for some time now. They annoy me at 7am and at the beach, but they are beautiful to watch.

In a way, I feel as though I can identify with birds. Baby birds hatch and stay in the nest for a while getting loved on and fed by mom. Then when she feels they are ready, she pushes them out of the nest so they can learn to fly. Some birds begin flying right away while others take a little while to adjust to the wind, altitude, being without mom, etc. I feel like one of those birds that struggles to fly. I’ve taken a few nose dives at the ground and managed to not break my neck when I crash. I’m starting to feel the wind blow a little bit stronger, which makes me feel like it’s time for me to take a swan dive out of the nest again. I’m scared and I’m anxious but it’s about time I step, or rather, fall into the world.

I go to just about every home Auburn football game. Auburn has a big bird rehabilitation center at the university and every home game they have one of the eagles, either the golden eagle or the bald eagle, fly around the field to pump up the fans and the players. That’s always my favorite part of the game. The raw beauty and power of raptors is intense. These birds soar like it’s the easiest thing on the planet. Maybe that’s why as humans we absolutely had to figure out how to fly. It gives you a sense of freedom.

The eagles that fly at Auburn represent numerous things to me- strength, speed, beauty, freedom, and grace to name a few. It amazes me to see these huge birds flying among 86,000+ people with wingspans of six feet, three inch talons and a sharp beak that could seriously injure a person and yet they soar around, spot the dead rat their handler is flinging around and dive to catch it, all to the screaming of the thousands of fans. The fans may not realize it, but the eagles have the freedom to fly up and out of the stadium at any time.

If the eagles fly off, they probably won’t return. Why can’t I be less like a baby bird and more like an eagle?

It’s suzie by the way haha. Hope this wasn’t too long.

Hey Suzie! Thank you so much for practicing. You’re great.

My favorite paragraphs are the last three, especially the parts where you describe the eagle soaring over the football stadium. I would have loved to see more about what you were seeing as you sat at that picnic table bench (weren’t you cold?).

It was our last night in San Antonio and we were enjoying a delicious dinner on the patio of our hotel, right on the river in the middle of the city. It was hot. Now that’s an understatement. It was over 100 degrees at 5:30 in the evening. But we convinced the waiter to leave the door open so that the AC blew out and around us as we enjoyed the evening light by the water.

There were about a dozen mallard ducks paddling in the water just across the pathway from us, doing their duck thing. Diving and ruffling the water off their feathers, pecking at each other, occasionally waddling up onto the shore.

All of a sudden, a large gray flying creature whooshed down to the edge of the dirt, hovering over the river, dipping his head in for a drink every so often. As he rose back to a sitting position, I whispered to my husband, “I think that’s an owl. Can I possibly be right?” Owls aren’t known for being out and about before nightfall. Owls aren’t known for sitting on the ground. Owls aren’t known for hanging out with ducks.

But, sure enough, it was an owl.

And the ducks were alarmed, quickly moving away from where this bird of prey was getting his evening libation. I had my camera, but not my big lens, so I zeroed in as much as I could with the wide angle, and snapped off four shots, one of which showed him with his big, owl face looking at the camera, while his body faced squarely in the opposite direction. Owls have always fascinated me with their swivel like ability to move their heads. And, of course, their ability to grind up and regurgitate small living creatures, leaving a ‘tell’ of white debris in their wake.

But this owl was not interested in capturing dinner. I think maybe he was hot – and he needed a drink. He hung around for a good 15 minutes, flying up into a tree across the river where we could no longer see him. But lots of other people did! Over the course of those minutes, a small crowd of ‘fans’ gathered, snapping away with their cell phones. Our surprise visitor had created a small sensation along the riverwalk. And we enjoyed getting a glimpse.

(You can catch your own glimpse of this amazing creature here (You’ll need to scroll to the bottom of the post for this picture: http://drgtjustwondering.blogspot.com/2011/09/shifting-gearsmoving-towards-retreat.html )

I love this story. I remember reading about it on your blog a little while ago. Your writing style is good because I can see it, I can see the river and the ducks and the patio and the owl in the tree. I’m sure your writing voice sounds just like you telling a story over dinner.

This is a quick bird one … while riding home on the commuter train last week.

A flash of bright Yellow Cuts the vertical of the rain

An oriole Singing To the percussion of the rain

Technical fault three minute stop Interlude on the six o’clock train

Through three degrees of separation – windowpane, wind, wheels clattering

The even song Whistling Onward the train through monsoon rain

This is good. I don’t really know if you’re talking about a bird that looks like lightning, or if the lightning allowed you to see the bird, or if the lightning reminded you of a bird. And that might be okay.

This poem works as an interesting metaphor, something beautiful in the midst of a day filled with rain and delays on the train, beauty in the middle of darkness. I like it.

Were you intentionally trying to rhyme the last line of the longer stanzas? I’m not sure if you need it. Rhyme is really hard to use in modern poetry. Most of the time it makes the poem look amateur and hokey. I don’t think your poem is hokey, but you have to be careful.

Thanx for the comment. Not trying to rhyme the longer stanza’s … just came out that way… but you’re right. They need some work. Anyway, it was just a quick one. I stick them in a draft box and re-polish them when I’m stuck with the novel.

It’s funny how these things happen. You posted a revised version on your blog right?

Frolicking through nature I spot a passerby A tiny red fox, cunning and sly.

Climbing the rocks a soft eagles cry he’s running away…

Power terror…

beauty…

Goodbye Mr.Fox A valiant fight But today You lose to this supreme, mighty bird of prey.

I meant to put an extra line between ” a valiant fight” and “but today,” because, well, it just sounds a little awkward at the end like that.

I loved this! This was an amazing poem.

I loved this exercise because the book I have coming out in November is called, “In Everything, Birds.” It contains 75 poems that some how, some way have birds in them, maybe only 6 times as the actual theme.

the birds crept in twilight padding on the wet grass.

I lay with my head on the concrete staring at them.

The red robins were my favorite because they always seemed to turn toward me and stare. Something about being stared at with their beedy eyes, while their chests heaved up and down. But in that time they would sometimes look for a minute or more, just staring. Sometimes it hopped closer to me.

Eventually it would turn away, pounding its beak into the clay soil and ripping out grass til its prey wiggled wildly in its beak. Then it’d jump then let out its wings and flap them as it would go up and up till it swooped into a thick tree where it disappeared.

I see other birds too sometimes. But they never look at me. Just stay for their breakfast bugs and then off to the tree to chit chat with their friends across the block.

Now there are no birds in the yard. But there is a whipering chatter, quiet but fervent, like whispers during church. Just the empty grass, and the empty plants, and empty trees. Not even the bees are up to make their entrance. The sky is a chilly blue. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to watching for these birds who could care less about me. But here I am. Listening to their singing. They have started singing. They are so excited. They can feel the rush of dawn coming. They know the time for their eggs to hatch is coming. And soon they will have have helpless little babies clinging to their nests, which they will feed, and they will love. That is nature. Everyone loves their babies.

Their singing, like small hymnals, like children running. I want to feel excited too, I want to sing out just because I am alive and sun is coming. I am almost annoyed to be witnessing their divine faith.

Being a frail bird is accepting death can snatch you up any night, so morning is a celebration always. I poke my finger into the dirt, slowly pull a blade of grass from out the dirt. Its long root lay flat in my hand. I toss it aside, it lay lost forgotten to god as it will dry and wither away.

My plants will appreciate that though, kill a few blades of grass, make some more room for their roots to flourish.

http://writeitonmywall.wordpress.com/

Beautiful piece of prose. Great descriptions and use of language. There is so much beautiful color within this piece. The flow is rather smooth. As I was reading this, I felt like I was a participant in the experience. I like the way you take your readers on a beautiful, captivating journey through the use of the spoken word. A lovely piece of writing all around.

“Hey Kristi, do you want to go outside now?” I say. Of course, she doesn’t reply. How could she? She has cerebral palsy and has had it ever since she was born nine years ago. Of course, she understands us, my husband Max, our youngest, Daphne, who’s seven, and I, but we can only understand her through vain attempts to ask her ‘yes blink once’ and ‘no blink twice’ questions repeatedly until we get what she wants to say. She blinks twice. (No) “Come on Kristi, the weather’s perfect!” I say. “Yeah, come ON Kristi!” asks Daphne. Kristi blinks twice, her grey eyes (she gets those from Max) dull and uninterested. “Well, I don’t care whether you want to or not, but you are going to go outside and get a breath of fresh air for once, instead of being cooped up inside all the time!” I say determined. Kristi blinks once but stares at me icily, which is her way rolling her eyes and saying “Fine.” I push her wheelchair with Daphne chattering about her day happily and carefully roll it down the steps of our porch. We walk like this until we reach the park. Usually it’s filled with happy toddlers and fussy moms, but today the new amusement park is open, and we didn’t want to make Kristi feel bad because she can’t go on any rides, so we decided to stay home. We sit on the grass for a little while in silence until Daphne pulls my arm excitedly. “Look Mommy!” she says, cheeks flushed red with delight, “It’s a canary!”

I turned my head to Daphne’s chubby finger and there it was, a canary, hopping closer and closer to us, cocking its head curiously. I look at Kristi as she sits, her eyes, shining, focused on the slowly advancing bird. “Oh Mommy, can we feed it?” Daphne asks, in a, I admit, slightly whiny tone. “Oh dang,” I mutter, careful to omit any swear words teachers might later ask in a condescending tone where Daphne could have learned it because she certainly didn’t learn it at home, right? “I forgot to bring food, I’m sorry sweetie.” “Aw man,” Daphne sighs, and I can see the disappointment on Kristi’s face. It seems the canary does too, and as its beady eyes scan Kristi’s face, it hops forward and tilts its head almost sympathetically. Then, suddenly, the canary flutters suddenly upward towards Kristi’s hand, which is resting on the arm of her chair. We all hold our breaths, and Kristi stays so still she doesn’t even blink. Then the canary starts hopping around Kristi’s wheelchair, her arms, and on her head. It then promptly flies away, but not before it delivers a mini white slimy bomb on my head, which sends Daphne rolling on the floor and Kristi cracking the smallest smile. But as I watch the canary fly away, I’m not mad, but thankful that it was kind enough to make my Kristi’s day.

*please comment on my story and how to make it better **P.S. this is not a true story (well, maybe it is for someone else)

Prompt #9: Birds Usually Gather Where Lots Of People Are Around By Kiki Stamatiou a. k. a. Joanna Maharis

Birds are generally found in a group where there are lots of people around, such as a parking lot. On many occasions when I go to one of my local Walmart stores with my aunt, and my grandmother, we see lots of birds near our or hovering nearby. Generally, they are looking for food.

We often saw many of the birds when we used to go to fast food places years ago. I remember sitting in our car in the parking lot of the fast food restaurant, and my aunt would toss out some French fries onto the ground near her car.

Several little birds swarmed around aiming to get even a piece of the French fries.

My aunt got out of our car, walked around in the parking lot, scattering the pieces of French fries to be sure many of the birds could enjoy them, instead of having them fight over the fries.

Upon leaving the parking lot of the fast food place, we stopped off at one of our local Walmarts where there were other birds nearby. We had some French fries left, so my aunt tossed them out to the birds who swarmed around them and nibbled on them.

I enjoy watching the little sparrows prance about when they’d walk. I remember remarking to my aunt how cute I thought they were. I got out of the car, and took pictures of them with my cell phone. My aunt used her Smart phone to take pictures of the birds.

Birds are such gentle little creatures. I couldn’t help but fall in love with them. I’ve always loved birds since I was a small child.

During my high school and college years, my family had a parrot my dad named Mr. Alex. We taught it to speak Greek, in addition to speaking English. I taught it some Spanish, because I was studying the language during my junior and senior years of high school. Mr. Alex was a nice form of company. He enjoyed listening to music from our stereo, while I helped my mother with the housework. In particular, he liked the music of New Kids On The Block.

We often placed his cage in our living room. He sat on top of it when we’d let him out from time to time. He watched television with us. Mr. Alex loved to watch music concerts, especially when it came to watching New Kids On The Block perform. He even learned the words to their songs and would sing along with them.

Whenever my dad would talk on the phone, Mr. Alex would imitate him. My dad talked fast in his manner of speech. Our parrot learned to do the same through imitating him.

He was such a sweet little bird, even though he’d wake up early in the mornings whenever I had a day off from work, and he’d kick his cage. In doing so, he woke me up with all the noise he was making. I told him if he didn’t stop kicking the cage and start behaving himself, I’d take away his music privileges. All and all, I’ll always remember the special times we had together.

When my parents sold our house and moved down to Florida, my brother sold Mr. Alex to a pet shop to make sure he’d get a good home. I couldn’t take the bird with me, because I was staying at the college dormitories when attending college. Pets weren’t allowed other than fish. My brother and other relatives weren’t able to take him either, because they were working, and didn’t want to be woken up at night by him.

He looks down on us in the garden. Surely we are not the target. But something has caught his attention and he has swooped in to check out the ground to see if there is something down here he wants. It is usually a zarigueya, or opossum, or sometimes a dead rat. It might even be an iguana, but I think I would have seen a dead iguana, even in the neighbor’s yard. And the aroma of a rotting iguana is not one you can miss. Still, if a turkey vulture is in your tree, you can bet there is something dead on the ground.

This particular bird sits very still, barely moving but for his head, slowly perusing, searching. His great gray talons spread wide and grasp the branch; you clearly would not want those talons grasping for you. In fact, the mere presence of a turkey vulture, while visually awesome, makes you check your position, making certain there is a close retreat should the need arise.

His steely body curves upward to a large, proud chest and continues to the thick neck and head that is, frankly, a bit too small. The coal-black feathers gather neatly against his back; when he is in flight you wonder how he folds those long wings into such a compact space.

Sitting in the tree above my garden, he casts a pallor that makes even the flamboyanes lose some of their fiery red color. There is not a cat to be seen, and I feel I should retreat, as well. But I cannot; I am drawn to the bird’s god-like magnificence. I don’t know if any civilization has used the turkey vulture as a great spiritual symbol, but it would be entirely appropriate to elevate the bird to one of respect and reverence.

I attempt to snap a photo or two, but the photos are inevitably unsatisfying. Turkey Vultures land with their backs to the sun so as not to allow the bright rays to interfere with their sight, so photos are backlit and the subject is dark. Clever. I have many photos of turkey vultures, but all of them unsatisfying.

But then, I’m not certain turkey vultures were put on Earth for my gratification.

I don’t see any birds, but from my chair in front of the open window I hear three of them. The first one is conversing with pauses between words. Wae, wae, wae, waewae, wae. It’s the one farthest away. I have to push my ear through the house to hear it. The fresh, cool air is propelling his sound into my home. I’m sure I’ve heard this bird or its kin before.

The second one is in this tree somewhere. The tree is I think some kind of oak and is healthy and changing. Its blooms hug it near its base more firmly than at the top. It’s the biggest thing in a yard full of bushes and shrubs. The bird, hidden in this sea of green leaves somewhere, is chirping a standard song where each note extends for minutes unless you lean in to really hear the parts where she changes her tune as she inhales and exhales. heehooheehooheehooheehooheehooheehooheehooheehooheehoo.

Somewhere in the middle there is a third crying out, making a noise that sounds like the radiation that comes from the sun in a desert. It wails for ten or twelve seconds at a time before it stops. If it were a visible wave it would be a bell – starting soft, getting loudest in the middle, falling back into silence. aaaeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeaaa. It reminds me only of heat. It’s the sound I’d expect to hear if I pressed my face to the pavement of a highway in the summer. It is a new cup of coffee, set aside for a moment or two. It’s the pool of grease on the center of the pizza slice and the dark backseat of a parked car after a wedding. Every few minutes a few of those steaming sounds overlap, like there’s a second or third one making the same hot sound, but I know it’s a single bird. He doesn’t always stop to do other things before starting again.

The dove cooed softly to the other doves, eating the many different seeds I had put in the bird feeder this morning. I watched as they gathered around the food, almost in a civilized manner, taking turns eating the stale seeds. The fluttered their white feathers, hopping around and looking every now and then for any signs of danger. I held very still, watching them from the window. Suddenly, a noisy cardinal came swooping down towards the bird feeder, spooking the doves a bit. The cardinal, and a few others of its kind, started colonizing the food. The doves quickly moved away, letting the scary red birds eat. These birds, I noticed, were a lot different from the doves. They pecked at each other, eager to eat their food. A lot of times, they would quickly snap their heads around, looking for every other bird that wanted their food. I thought the doves were much better.

Stretching her arms, she yawned. A bird dropped by her right on the benched. She shoo’ed it away.

“What a fine morning,” she said.

Her eyes dropped and her head started falling down. A bird perched on her head and she jerked right up.

“Shoo.” Her hand waved it away. It titled it’s tiny little head at her. “Shoo, you stupid bird, shoo.”

She yawned again. The bird flew away.

The fresh wind blew again and she found her eyes started closing again. She rested her head on the soft cradle of the bench. The birds were chirping. She breathed slowly and deep.

One deep inhale. One deep exhale. One deep inhale. Hold. One deep exhale. Hold.

A bird fluttered by her hands. She continued breathing. The bird danced towards her shoulders. Exhale.

She heard more flutters of wings. Inhale. Louder chirps. The bird on her hand stopped moving. It scratched softly on her skin. A small smile appeared on her mouth.

Then it pecked at her.

Her eyes shot wide opened. She glared at the bird. Then her eyes raised up as she saw the school of birds surrounding her. They were bobbing their tiny little heads and chirping.

She waved her hands around them. They didn’t move.

“Hell?” she said.

The little bird on her arms scratched her again. A sigh escaped her lips.

“That’s nice,” she said.

The birds started flying away. All that’s left was the bird perched on her hands and about 4 or 5 slowly closing in on her.

She shoved her hands inside her pockets. She found dry stale crackers. She grinned at the birds.

“Okay you dumb birds,” she said as she cracked the crackers in tiny little pieces. She threw the food on the ground. “Here you go!”

The birds didn’t move.

They went closer and she started to look like like kind of feathered weido. She scratched her head.

A cup of steaming coffee appeared before her face.

“Didn’t know you were into Disney stuff,” he said.

She took it and took a sip. “You’re late Jon.”

“Good morning to you too,” he said.

She blinked. She looked around. The birds were already gone.

She frowned. “This coffee stinks.”

Seagulls surround my house. That’s logical, given that I live by the seaside. Yet the profusion of these pseudo-pigeons of the port is more that I could have expected when I moved here.

Driving around the corner, I glimpse a whole flock of seagulls resting on a huge garbage container. I can barely see what’s underneath, for it’s swamped in white and grey feathers. For all the shrieking and flapping those birds make, they are remarkably cool when I drive by. A few of them give me the eye. They’re not afraid of humans; nobody comes to slaughter them; they feed on the overflowing rubbish bins and the discarded remains of fast-food meals. The trail of faeces they leave behind is rivalled only by pigeons’. They are the classic residents of the city, as timeless as the craggy cliffs and the waves.

It’s not unusual for a gull to sit on window sills, engaging in staring contests with humans and their pets. The braver ones fly through open windows, daring to question what lies inside; they get chased out by frightened housewives and immensely loyal cats.

A handful of other species make themselves comfortable in the gulls’ wake. Tiny brown and grey ones picking at invisible crumbs; the occasional blackbird; the ever-present pigeon, who feasts on everything; sparrows which love to hop around instead of fly.

it twaddled on its flimsy feet, looking for its next location as it sat upon the twig of an olive tree. its tail looped around its body and began chirping in a burst of excitement. the evening sun was blocked by a single ball of cloud, there was a gentle breeze which carried with it dry autumn leaves. the bird had already disappeared and it felt empty,

Birds of a feather flock together.

Thats the idiom that comes to mind as I watched the pidgeons gathered on the ground looking for seeds in the grass.

Those wild birds. They risk danger and captivity by coming near humans and for what? For the sake of food.

I cant decide whether thats brave or just stupid.

I smile to myself, remembering a song about about poisoning the pidgeons in the park. I found its dark humor hilarious and it was a well written song.

Pidgeons are so weird, I thought as I watched them take flight when I came a little too close to them. How do they sync their movements so well together. Do they take choreograhy lessons?

I laugh at the idea of birds taking dance lessons from humans. Most likely it was the other way around and humans learned a thing or two about dancing from the pidgeons instead. With their little swaggering bodies, they always looked ready to throw it down and have a dance fight.

Birds have a life of their own. They do not act the same way that people act. The birds rest in the green trees and chirp with each other. As they fly they slap their wings and dive down to the ground below then. Once on the ground they search for bugs, worms and just grass to eat. They search for sticks and once located they grab it and fly into the tree where they have staredt building a nest. Their home will have eggs and soon the eggs will crack and little baby birds craw out of the egg shell and grow up to fly away like their parents to repeat the lives of their parents.

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Animal Writing Prompts: Explore Creatures Through Words

My name is Debbie, and I am passionate about developing a love for the written word and planting a seed that will grow into a powerful voice that can inspire many.

Animal Writing Prompts: Explore Creatures Through Words

Priming Your Imagination: Unleash Your Creativity with Animal Writing Prompts

Exploring the animal kingdom: using writing prompts to discover fascinating creatures, connecting with nature: engage with wildlife through animal writing prompts, crafting compelling characters: using animal writing prompts to develop unique protagonists, why should you consider animal-inspired metaphors, from fact to fiction: transforming animal facts into captivating stories, delving into animal emotions: exploring the depths of creature narratives through writing prompts, frequently asked questions, closing remarks.

Need a boost of inspiration to ignite your creative writing? Look no further! Our animal writing prompts are designed to transport you to the captivating world of furry, feathered, and scaly creatures. Whether you’re an aspiring writer or simply enjoy the art of storytelling, these prompts will unleash your imagination and bring out the hidden wordsmith in you.

Dive into the wildlife kingdoms or explore the depths of your imagination as you channel your thoughts into captivating stories, poems, or even journal entries. Let the animal writing prompts be your guide as you embark on an adventure where the boundaries of reality blend with the magic of your words.

Spark your creativity: Our collection of animal writing prompts is carefully crafted to ignite your creativity by offering unique and thought-provoking scenarios . From describing the daily life of a mischievous squirrel to imagining a conversation between two unlikely animal pals, these prompts will push the boundaries of your imagination.
Unleash unlimited possibilities: With animal writing prompts, the possibilities are boundless. Choose your protagonist from a diverse range of animals and spin tales that span across different genres. Whether you want to embark on a quest with a heroic lion or craft a suspenseful mystery with a curious cat, the power to explore limitless storylines is entirely in your hands.
Connect with emotions: Animals have the ability to evoke a wide range of emotions within us. Our animal writing prompts encourage you to tap into these emotional connections and craft narratives that stir both the heart and the mind. Discover the bittersweet complexities of a hummingbird’s journey or delve into the loyalty of a faithful dog, allowing your readers to feel a deep connection with your characters.

Exploring the Animal Kingdom: Using Writing Prompts to Discover Fascinating Creatures

When it comes to unraveling the mysteries of Mother Nature, few things capture our curiosity like the diverse and captivating creatures that inhabit our planet. From the humblest insects to the mighty apex predators, the animal kingdom is an endless source of fascination. By utilizing writing prompts , we can embark on a thrilling journey of exploration and discovery, delving deeper into the lives of these incredible beings that share our world.

Writing prompts offer a unique opportunity to delve into the intricacies of the animal kingdom. They encourage us to research, reflect, and express our understanding in a creative and engaging manner. Whether it’s imagining the world from the perspective of a migratory bird or pondering the survival strategies of nocturnal creatures, writing prompts prompt us to think critically and expansively about the animals that surround us.

Connecting with Nature: Engage with Wildlife through Animal Writing Prompts

Looking for a creative way to connect with nature and engage with wildlife? Look no further! Our animal writing prompts are designed to inspire your imagination and help you dive deep into the world of animals. Whether you’re an aspiring writer or simply enjoy the therapeutic benefits of writing, these prompts will ignite your creativity and bring you closer to the wonders of the natural world.

Exploring habitats: Discover the awe-inspiring beauty of different habitats and the unique animals that call them home. From the lush rainforests of the Amazon to the icy tundra of the Arctic, these prompts will transport you to the heart of these habitats and allow you to visualize the sights, sounds, and smells of each location. Immerse yourself in the wonders of the world, from the vibrant mosaic of a coral reef to the vast expanse of a savannah, and let your words paint a vivid picture that captures the essence of these habitats.

Celebrating animal diversity: Animals come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, each with their own fascinating characteristics and behaviors. Explore the incredible diversity of the animal kingdom through our writing prompts. Dive into the intriguing world of exotic creatures like the graceful cheetah or the playful dolphins and imagine their lives and interactions. Step into the shoes of endangered species and raise awareness about their plight, or create mythical creatures inspired by the natural world. The possibilities are endless, and these prompts will guide you in celebrating the beauty and complexity of wildlife.

Crafting Compelling Characters: Using Animal Writing Prompts to Develop Unique Protagonists

Creating memorable protagonists is essential in captivating readers and bringing your story to life. One effective way to develop unique and engaging characters is by using animal writing prompts. By exploring the behaviors, traits, and characteristics of various animals, you can infuse your protagonists with depth, complexity, and relatability.

Here are a few ways animal writing prompts can help you craft compelling characters:

Unveiling distinct personalities: Animals possess a wide range of personalities, from cunning foxes to loyal elephants. By emulating these traits in your protagonist, you can give them an intriguing personality that readers will connect with.
Depicting physical attributes: Animals have unique physical features that can shape your character’s appearance, such as a lion’s majestic mane or a peacock’s vibrant feathers. Incorporating these distinctive traits can boost your character’s visual appeal and make them stand out.
Exploring instincts and behaviors: Animals exhibit fascinating instincts and behaviors that can add depth to your characters. Whether it’s a wolf’s pack mentality or a spider’s web-spinning prowess, integrating these elements can reveal intriguing aspects of your protagonist’s personality and motivations.

By utilizing animal writing prompts, you can unlock a world of inspiration to create protagonists that are captivating, multi-dimensional, and leave a lasting impression on your readers. So, embrace the wild and let the animal kingdom guide your character development!

Unlocking the Magic of Metaphor: Enhance Your Writing with Animal-inspired Descriptions

In the world of writing, words have the power to transport readers to new dimensions. One of the most captivating tools at a writer’s disposal is the use of metaphors. Metaphors allow us to paint vivid pictures by comparing one thing to another. And what better way to unlock the magic of metaphor than by drawing inspiration from the fascinating animal kingdom?

Animals possess unique characteristics that can add depth and richness to our words. Whether it’s the fierce determination of a lion, the graceful elegance of a swan, or the resilient nature of an ant, incorporating animal-inspired descriptions can effortlessly enhance your writing. By using metaphors that evoke the essence of different animals, writers can captivate their audience, evoke emotions, and create a more engaging experience.

Vibrant imagery: Animals offer a palette of vibrant images that can bring your writing to life. By describing a character as having the agility of a cheetah or the cunning of a fox, readers will easily visualize the traits you’re trying to convey.
Emotional resonance: Animals often evoke strong emotions in us, and when carefully chosen, animal metaphors can have a similar effect on readers. An innocent doe standing in a meadow can symbolize vulnerability, while the gracefulness of a dolphin leaping through the waves can evoke feelings of freedom and joy.
Symbolism and cultural references: Animals hold significant symbolic meanings across various cultures and literary traditions. By using animal-inspired metaphors, writers can tap into these universal symbols and add layers of depth and meaning to their work.

Unlock the power of metaphor by exploring the vast animal kingdom. Enhance your writing with the enchanting allure of animal-inspired descriptions as you embark on a journey to captivate and enthrall your readers.

From Fact to Fiction: Transforming Animal Facts into Captivating Stories

When it comes to creating captivating stories about animals, there is a wealth of fascinating facts waiting to be transformed into tales that will captivate readers young and old. By converting these facts into engaging fiction, we have the power to transport our audience into a world filled with extraordinary creatures and imaginative adventures.

One effective way to transform animal facts into captivating stories is by anthropomorphizing the animals. Giving human traits, such as emotions and personalities, to the animal characters adds depth and relatability to the story. This allows readers to connect with the characters on an emotional level, making the narrative more engaging. For example, instead of a simple description of how a cheetah runs, we can create a character who dreams of being the fastest in the animal kingdom and embarks on a thrilling race against other creatures.

Create a unique world: To truly captivate readers, it’s essential to build a unique world where animals live, interact, and face challenges. This can be a fantasy realm, an altered version of our own world, or even a completely imaginary universe. Use vivid descriptions, rich imagery, and attention to detail to transport readers to this new reality.
Weave in moral dilemmas: Exploring ethical and moral questions is a powerful way to engage readers. By integrating dilemmas into the animal characters’ journeys, such as choosing between personal gain or helping others, we can not only entertain but also foster empathy and critical thinking.

So, let your imagination run wild, and let the animal facts inspire you to create captivating stories filled with wonder, excitement, and meaningful messages. By transforming facts into fiction, we can open up a world of possibilities that will leave readers eager to embark on animal-centric journeys time and time again.

Delving into Animal Emotions: Exploring the Depths of Creature Narratives through Writing Prompts

Animals are often portrayed as mysterious creatures with their own internal worlds and emotions. Writing about animal emotions can provide a unique perspective into the depths of their narrative and offer a deeper understanding of their complex lives. Through the use of writing prompts, we can delve into the rich tapestry of animal emotions and explore the fascinating stories that lie within.

Writing prompts can serve as powerful tools to unlock our creativity and imagination. They can help us step into the shoes of animals, allowing us to empathize with their experiences and emotions. By using prompts specifically designed to explore animal emotions, we can challenge ourselves to think beyond our own human perspectives and embrace the vast array of emotions that exist in the animal kingdom.

Discover the hidden stories: Writing prompts can help us uncover the untold tales of animals, shedding light on their experiences and emotions. Through imaginative storytelling, we can bring their narratives to life.
Develop empathy: Stepping into the perspectives of animals can foster empathy and compassion. By understanding their emotions, we can better advocate for their well-being and create a deeper connection with the natural world.
Expand our understanding: Exploring animal emotions through writing prompts allows us to broaden our knowledge and challenge preconceived notions. It opens our minds to the diverse range of emotions and experiences that animals possess.

So, grab a pen and paper, or your preferred writing tool, and embark on a journey into the intricate tapestry of animal emotions. Through writing prompts, we can engage our imaginations, give voice to the voiceless, and uncover the captivating narratives that exist within the animal kingdom.

Q: What are animal writing prompts? A: Animal writing prompts are creative ideas or topics that revolve around animals, encouraging writers to explore and express their thoughts and ideas through words.

Q: Why should I use animal writing prompts? A: Animal writing prompts provide an exciting platform to ignite your imagination and creativity. They allow you to delve into the fascinating world of animals, discover their unique characteristics, and develop your writing skills.

Q: How can animal writing prompts be beneficial? A: Animal writing prompts can stimulate your creative thinking by prompting you to observe and appreciate the diversity of the animal kingdom. They enhance your descriptive writing abilities and help you develop a deep understanding of animal behavior and traits.

Q: Who can benefit from animal writing prompts? A: Animal writing prompts are suitable for anyone with an interest in animals, whether you are an aspiring writer looking to practice your skills, a student seeking inspiration for an assignment, or simply someone who enjoys exploring the natural world through writing.

Q: What kind of topics can be covered in animal writing prompts? A: Animal writing prompts can focus on a wide range of topics, such as describing the appearance of a specific animal, imagining the life of a rare species, creating a fictional story based on animal characters, or even expressing emotions and perspectives from an animal’s point of view.

Q: Are animal writing prompts only for fiction? A: No, animal writing prompts are not limited to fiction. They can be equally valuable for nonfiction writing, encouraging you to research and share your knowledge on various animal-related subjects, like environmental conservation, animal behavior, or even personal experiences with animals.

Q: Can animal writing prompts be used for educational purposes? A: Absolutely! Animal writing prompts can be a fantastic tool for educators to engage students with the natural world and develop their writing skills. They can be incorporated into lesson plans, creative writing exercises, or as a means to explore scientific concepts in an engaging way.

Q: Where can I find animal writing prompts? A: Animal writing prompts can be found in various sources, such as writing blogs, educational websites, or creative writing books. Additionally, numerous online writing communities offer platforms where writers can share and find animal-related prompts to spark their creativity.

Q: Any tips for using animal writing prompts effectively? A: Certainly! To make the most out of animal writing prompts, it’s essential to embrace your curiosity and take the time to research and observe animals. Use vivid imagery and sensory language to bring your ideas to life. Don’t be afraid to explore various genres and experiment with different perspectives to unleash your creativity.

Q: Can animal writing prompts be used for group activities? A: Yes, animal writing prompts can be fantastic for group activities. They can be used as discussion-starters, collaborative storytelling exercises, or as prompts for group writing projects. Exploring animals through words together can foster teamwork, encourage diverse perspectives, and create an enjoyable and educational experience.

Incorporating animal-themed writing prompts allows us to delve into the fascinating world of creatures, fostering creativity and enhancing our understanding of the animal kingdom. So, let your imagination soar and discover the power of words in illuminating our connection with these majestic beings.

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3 Essays on Bird-watching and Writing

Posted on Thursday, May 21, 2020 by The Office of Modern Composition

In Chicago, May is the season for birds. Since our great city is on the lip of Lake Michigan, tens of thousands of migratory birds stop here on the way to their summer homes, and spending time watching them can be tremendously rewarding.

All three of us at The Office of Modern Composition are enthusiastic novice bird-watchers. In the past, we have gone on an annual writer’s walk at The Magic Hedge in Chicago in early May to count birds and be quiet together. This year, such a walk was impossible — but we all looked at birds on our own anyway, and then came together once a week to discuss our findings.

Here are three essays we’ve come up with this year that connect birding to writing. We are also interested in whatever writing you might be doing about birds or that is bird-adjacent. Send us your own bird essays (email [email protected])! We’ll publish the ones we love.

Is This Bird-watching Or Is This Writing?

by Jill Riddell

The settings where birding and writing take place are different from one another. External details are different, but inner emotions and various milestones are similar.

Stage 1. Thrilled, Enthusiastic

Whether invigorated by an inspiring idea to write about or convinced that today is a good day to bird, I begin with outrageous optimism.

Stage 2. Committed, Diligent

I follow through. I sit down somewhere to write, or I successfully wake up at five to go to my favorite spot to look for birds before I go to work. Nothing deters me. I am determined.

Stage 3. Doubt

Uncertainty creeps in.

Is this idea as special as I thought it was?

The woods are awfully quiet. I don’t see any birds.

Stage 4. Despair, Self-Pity

The word “catastrophize” perfectly encapsulates the inner monologue at stage four. Not only was the initial idea for the piece I’m writing stupid, but pretty much all my ideas are. Not only are there no birds in these particular woods at this moment, but I’m bad at observation, I’m not patient enough, not expert enough. A competent writer would be able write this piece much more easily. A good birder would be able to find birds.

Stage 4 used to linger because as much as I hated it, there was also something about it that was mesmerizing. Once the idea that I was idiotic for attempting what I was doing took hold, that idea sounded so much wiser than Stage 1 with its childish enthusiasm.

I will say, though, that one advantage of growing older is that this phase is briefer than it used to be. Its uselessness has been proven over and over again.

Yet it seems to be a step I cannot skip entirely.

Stage 5. Cautious Hope (“Maybe there IS something there”)

Something moves. From far away, I detect the shape of a distant warbler and its familiar flight pattern. In writing, the parallel for this is a decent sentence. It’s subtle, this change. A roseate spoonbill doesn’t fly into the oak in front me, and I don’t suddenly write a line like Shakespeare’s. It’s not a miracle sent down on a moonbeam. The sentence arises from who I am and the ecosystem I inhabit.

But it’s enough. Despair shifts gently to one side, off center stage, though never quite exiting. (“I’m here if you need me,” it says in a sexy whisper, handing me its card. “Just call.”)

Stage 6. Returning to Work

In birding, I raise my binoculars for a closer examination of that shape I saw. I study it, track it, and either it turns out to actually be an interesting bird or it doesn’t, but regardless, I now feel new hope. Once I’ve seen one thing moving, I detect others. There’s life here. I could’ve stopped at Stage 4 and decided this was a hopeless waste of time, but I didn’t, and now I’m discovering that secretly the trees are alive with birds. A few are species of flycatchers, which I can’t really discern the difference between, to be honest; but some of the birds are stunners with bright plumage and fancy stripes. Over a period of an hour, some I identify and some I can’t but I enjoy trying. Not in the thrilled manner of Stage 1—but in the way of quiet competence.

In writing, this is when I start going at a good clip. That first decent sentence is followed by another and the work no longer feels laborious. In my head now I’m thinking neither “I suck at this,” nor, “I’m good at this.” I’m just a writer writing. I’m like a cook cooking or a knitter knitting or a potter making a type of vessel that she’s made before. The cool thing about it, though, is that this piece of writing or this bird excursion, like all handmade things, demands some element of improvisation and its end result will vary.

Stage 7. Pause

In either writing or birding, there’s no well-marked and completely agreed-upon finish line. I stop in an arbitrary spot. Whatever was accomplished is enough for now. The experience was full enough, though, that now I know I can trust myself to continue with this quest. For both writing and birding, the pursuit is lifelong. I know I’ll go back to the page to look at those words. I’ll know I’ll go back to watch birds.

The Birder’s Dilemma

by Raghav Rao

In September 2018, I began a quest to see 100 hundred American birds. To date, T and I have seen 122.

Whenever I attack a list, or begin the act of collecting, I remember this paraphrased quote: “A collector acquiring the item that completes his collection signifies his own death.” As I’ve said countless times to anyone who will listen, there is one excellent reason for ignoring this sentiment: it was made, pompously no doubt, by a French philosopher. And let’s be honest: they never say anything useful.

Of course, having hit 100, wordlessly, our goal crept up to … what, exactly? We’re not sure. But here’s a quote from a much more practical Englishman: “Ah, but man’s reach should exceed his grasp / or what’s a heaven for.”

To those who are judging us, who may be saying, “Counting! How uncouth. Why don’t you just enjoy the present? Enjoy the sunshine, nature, air … all that stuff?” Part of me wants to say, “We are, goddamnit! No need for mutual exclusivity.”

But we live in a counting culture, a goal-centered culture. And that resides deep inside us. (Well, inside me, at least.) The shame of not living in the present engenders a new quest: abandoning all quests. And if that’s a paradox, then it’s clear what the real quest is: to live in the paradox.

You may be asking how this is analogous to writing. And I could answer something about word counts or pages per day. But I really believe that fundamentally, flow and joy are connected somehow to the idea of abandoning objectives and embracing the here and now. But even phrasing it that way converts achieving flow and joy into another kind of objective.

With birding and writing, to paraphrase the Zen monks, if you think too much, you’re effed.

Turn Around And Go The Other Way

by Sophie Lucido Johnson

The mayor of Chicago has closed the lakefront.

She’s done this because there is a global pandemic, and people can’t be trusted on beaches to stay calm or six feet apart. And in the grand scheme of things, giving up the lakefront for one summer is a small sacrifice. It is not as though we’ve been asked to give up shoes, or calling our family members on their birthdays, or ordering tacos.

But on the other hand, Chicago’s Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary (otherwise known, wonderfully, accurately, as The Magic Hedge) is maybe the number one best thing about the city — hot dogs and skyscrapers be damned. Especially in May, when the migratory songbirds hang out there on their way northward, the little plot of protected land feels dreamlike. How can there be so many rare birds in such a small space?

My husband and I both have birthdays in May, and always celebrate at the Magic Hedge. There were times early on, when we lived closer, that we went there every day. But this year, there could be no such outings. I imagined the birds coming in for their annual spring fling, flitting around all, “Where are all the people? Usually there are people here. Why have all the people disappeared? Is it something about the weather?” Because surely birds watch us, too. We can’t be so arrogant as to think that it’s a one-sided practice.

This year, The Magic Hedge, which had always been fantastical and difficult to write about, became a fiction. I spent time walking along the non-lake-adjacent sidewalks in my neighborhood making up whole stories with interwoven plot lines about what was going on at Montrose this May. Maybe the birds took advantage. Maybe they were luxuriating on the paths where binoculars-laden humans normally perched. Maybe all avian inhibitions had been abandoned, and the birds were having epic Shakespearian dramas. There was no way to know!

Over time, not knowing became delightful. I let myself daydream into the realms of the impossible. Owls befriending indigo buntings. Terns learning to sing like mourning doves. Who was going to stop me?

And meanwhile, new bird-watching spaces unfolded. They’d always been there, but they were easy to ignore when Montrose was available, perfect and total as it was. One afternoon my husband and I found four species of warbler at one time in the tree outside our house. (There were also orioles and grosbeaks, and my roommate saw a scarlet tanager.)

Every Saturday all spring we went to a new forest preserve. Once we came upon twenty gargantuan herons’ nests in the trees, each with a stalky bird standing keeping watch. Once we found a great horned owl teaching her two owlets how to fly. We’d never have seen any of this had The Magic Hedge been open.

Restraint can be a gift. There are always many paths to choose; the mistake would be to stop walking altogether. And not to be too cliche, but so it is in writing. When you hit a dead end, consider the possibility that it isn’t a dead end at all. Turn around and go the other direction. Who knows what else there might be.

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Nature Writing Examples

by Lisa Hiton

From the essays of Henry David Thoreau, to the features in National Geographic , nature writing has bridged the gap between scientific articles about environmental issues and personal, poetic reflections on the natural world. This genre has grown since Walden to include nature poetry, ecopoetics, nature reporting, activism, fiction, and beyond. We now even have television shows and films that depict nature as the central figure. No matter the genre, nature writers have a shared awe and curiosity about the world around us—its trees, creatures, elements, storms, and responses to our human impact on it over time.

Whether you want to report on the weather, write poems from the point of view of flowers, or track your journey down a river in your hometown, your passion for nature can manifest in many different written forms. As the world turns and we transition between seasons, we can reflect on our home, planet Earth, with great dedication to description, awe, science, and image.

Journal Examples: Keeping Track of Your Tracks

One of the many lost arts of our modern time is that of journaling. While keeping a journal is a beneficial practice for all, it is especially crucial to nature writers. John A. Murray , author of Writing About Nature: A Creative Guide , begins his study of the nature writing practice with the importance of journaling:

Nature writers may rely on journals more consistently than novelists and poets because of the necessity of describing long-term processes of nature, such as seasonal or environmental changes, in great detail, and of carefully recording outdoor excursions for articles and essays[…] The important thing, it seems to me, is not whether you keep journals, but, rather, whether you have regular mechanisms—extended letters, telephone calls to friends, visits with confidants, daily meditation, free-writing exercises—that enable you to comprehensively process events as they occur. But let us focus in this section on journals, which provide one of the most common means of chronicling and interpreting personal history. The words journal and journey share an identical root and common history. Both came into the English language as a result of the Norman Victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. For the next three hundred years, French was the chief language of government, religion, and learning in England. The French word journie, which meant a day’s work or a day’s travel, was one of the many words that became incorporated into English at the time[…]The journal offers the writer a moment of rest in that journey, a sort of roadside inn along the highway. Here intellect and imagination are alone with the blank page and composition can proceed with an honesty and informality often precluded in more public forms of expression. As a result, several important benefits can accrue: First, by writing with unscrutinized candor and directness on a particular subject, a person can often find ways to write more effectively on the same theme elsewhere. Second, the journal, as a sort of unflinching mirror, can remind the author of the importance of eliminating self-deception and half-truths in thought and writing. Third, the journal can serve as a brainstorming mechanism to explore new topics, modes of thought, or types of writing that otherwise would remain undiscovered or unexamined. Fourth, the journal can provide a means for effecting a catharsis on subjects too personal for publication even among friends and family. (Murray, 1-2)

A dedicated practice of documenting your day, observing what is around you, and creating your own field guide of the world as you encounter it will help strengthen your ability to translate it all to others and help us as a culture learn how to interpret what is happening around us.

Writing About Nature: A Creative Guide by John A. Murray : Murray’s book on nature writing offers hopeful writers a look at how nature writers keeps journals, write essays, incorporate figurative language, use description, revise, research, and more.

Botanical Shakespeare: An Illustrated Compendium of All the Flowers, Fruits, Herbs, Trees, Seeds, and Grasses Cited by the World’s Greatest Playwright by Gerit Quealy and Sumie Hasegawa Collins: Helen Mirren’s foreword to the book describes it as “the marriage of Shakespeare’s words about plants and the plants themselves.” This project combines the language of Shakespeare with the details of the botanicals found throughout his works—Quealy and Hasegawa bring us a literary garden ripe with flora and fauna puns and intellectual snark.

What new vision of Shakespeare is provided by approaching his works through the lens of nature writing and botanicals?
Latin and Greek terms and roots continue to be very important in the world of botanicals. What do you learn from that etymology throughout the book? How does it impact symbolism in Shakespeare’s works?
Annotate the book using different colored highlighters. Seek out description in one color, interpretation in another, and you might even look for literary echoes using a third. How do these threads braid together?

The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland by Nan Shepherd : The Living Mountain is Shepherd’s account of exploring the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. Part of Britain’s Arctic, Shepherd encounters ravenous storms, clear views of the aurora borealis, and deep snows during the summer. She spent hundreds of days exploring the mountains by foot.

These pages were written during the last years of WWII and its aftermath. How does that backdrop inform Shepherd’s interpretation of the landscape?
The book is separated into twelve chapters, each dedicated to a specific part of life in the Cairngorms. How do these divisions guide the writing? Is she able to keep these elements separate from each other? In writing? In experiencing the land?
Many parts of the landscape Shepherd observes would be expected in nature writing—mountains, weather, elements, animals, etc. How does Shepherd use language and tone to write about these things without using stock phrasing or clichéd interpretations?

Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation by Kyo Maclear : Even memoir can be delivered through nature writing as we see in Kyo Maclear’s poetic book, Birds Art Life . The book is an account of a year in her life after her father has passed away. And just as Murray and Thoreau would advise, journaling those days and the symbols in them led to a whole book—one that delicately and profoundly weaves together the nature of life—of living after death—and how art can collide with that nature to get us through the hours.

How does time pass throughout the book? What techniques does Maclear employ to move the reader in and out of time?
How does grief lead Maclear into art? Philosophy? Nature? Objects?
The book is divided into the months of the year. Why does Maclear divide the book this way?
What do you make of the subtitles?

Is time natural? Describe the relationship between humans and time in nature.

So dear writers, take to these pages and take to the trails in nature around you. Journal your way through your days. Use all of your senses to take a journey in nature. Then, journal to make a memory of your time in the world. And give it all away to the rest of us, in words.

Lisa Hiton is an editorial associate at Write the World . She writes two series on our blog: The Write Place where she comments on life as a writer, and Reading like a Writer where she recommends books about writing in different genres. She’s also the interviews editor of Cosmonauts Avenue and the poetry editor of the Adroit Journal .

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Friday essay: on birds — feathered messengers from deep time

Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, UTS, University of Technology Sydney

Disclosure statement

Delia Falconer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Technology Sydney provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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When I experienced a great loss in in my early forties — almost a year to the day after another — I went to see my mother in the family home. She wasn’t a hugger or giver of advice, so instead we fed the birds. As she had when I was a child, she stood behind me in the kitchen with her shoulder propped against the back door, passing slices of apple and small balls of minced meat into my hand.

Each bird, apart from the snatching kookaburras, was touchingly gentle in the way it took food from my fingers. The white cockatoos ate daintily, one-legged. The lorikeets jumped onto the sloping ramp on both feet, like eager parachutists, to quarrel over the apple and press the juice from the pulp with stubby tongues.

Lined up on the veranda rail, the magpies cocked their heads to observe me before accepting meat precisely in their blue-white beaks. They had a beautiful, carolling song, with a chorded quality in the falling registers. But the bright-eyed butcher birds had the most lovely song of all: a full-throated piping, which I’ve heard compared to the Queen of the Night’s aria in Mozart’s Magic Flute.

Over decades, a family of these little blue-grey birds, had come to stack their hooked meat-eaters’ beaks with mince, which they flew to deliver to young somewhere in our neighbour’s garden, though we had never bothered to try to work out where they lived. This afternoon, when my mother and I opened the door, they landed by our side as they always had, having spotted us from their watching places. For a brief moment, surrounded by these vital creatures, I felt as if I might still want to be alive.

Small agents

Birds have always been small agents charged with carrying the burden of our feelings simply by following the logic of their own existence. The Irish imagined puffins as the souls of priests. The ancient Romans released an eagle when an emperor died in the belief it would “conduct his soul aloft”. In the Abrahamic religions, doves are given powers of revelation. We have even been inclined, right up until the present, to imagine birds as the souls of our recently departed returned to us, if only for a moment.

Even without being recruited into such labour, birds touch on our lives in small but significant ways. Once, in the botanical gardens of Melbourne, a boyfriend laughed until he almost cried at the mechanical, eager hopping of the tiny fairy wrens, a fact that only made me like him more. A friend tells the story of her uncle who ordered quail for the first time at a restaurant and cried when he saw it on his plate. “She had a raven’s heart, small and obdurate,” American author Don DeLillo writes of a nun in Underworld ; it is my favourite description in any novel.

In Japan, where my partner and I tried to ease our sadness, the calls of crows were ubiquitous in every town. Like the low sounds of its deer, they had a subdued, almost exhausted quality, as hollow as the bells that are rattled to call the oldest spirits to its Shinto temples.

In 1975, when his first wife left him, Masahise Fukase began to photograph these birds, which he had seen from the window of a train. He would keep taking their pictures – on a hilltop tori at dusk, grouped on the budding branches of a bare tree, in flying silhouette – for ten years. Ravens would become one of the most famous books of modern photography , hailed as a “masterpiece of mourning”. While some people see the birds in his photos as symbols of loneliness I see them as embodiments of pure intention. “I work and photograph to stop everything,” Fukase said. As if fulfilling a prophecy, he would spend the last two decades of his life in a coma, after falling down the stairs at his favourite bar.

Yet for all our emotional investment in them, we’ve never treated birds particularly well. To train a falcon in Qatar, owners sew the young bird’s eyes shut, unstitching and then restitching them for longer intervals, until it is entirely dependent on its keeper. In Asia the appetite for caged songbirds is so great that their calls are disappearing from its forests. Our careless acceptance that these extraordinary creatures are subject to our will is perhaps as damning as any direct mistreatment of them. This is symbolised for me by that fact that, in North America, owners of long pipelines add a putrid odorant to the natural gas they carry so that turkey vultures, circling over the deathly smell, will alert them to methane leaks.

We are currently draining marshes globally three times faster than we are clearing forests. Migratory Red Knots fly 15,000 kilometres per year between Australia and their breeding grounds in the Arctic Tundra, but they’re declining because of the industrial development of the Yellow Sea’s tidal mudflats, where they stop to feed and rest. One of the details that most haunted me in the reports of Australia’s mega-fires was the fact that many birds that survived the radiant heat would die of smoke inhalation because the continuous one-way airflow of their breathing systems and air sacs meant they couldn’t cough to clear their lungs.

When we first moved into my childhood home, wattlebirds fed in the grevilleas, calling from the rockery with voices that sounded, as a poet once said to me, like the cork being pulled from a bottle of champagne. While their long forms ending in a slim, curved beak seemed the embodiment of alertness, they were the birds our cat caught most often. To see one, rescued but internally injured, vomit up its honey and grow limp was one of my first intimations as a child of the world’s evils. Unable to bear the thought of their sleek, streaky bodies in the bare earth, my mother would bury them wrapped in tea towels. But it was the 70s and no one thought to keep the cat inside.

As my mother entered her nineties, her life contracted around her birds. Although experts were now advising that the lack of calcium could soften chicks’ bones, I continued, against my conscience, to put through her weekly grocery order, which contained as much bird mince as food for herself. She had stopped feeding the cockatoos, which had chewed her windowsills and the struts of the back door, but when they heard us in the kitchen they would still plaster their chests like great white flowers against the window or poke their heads through the large holes they’d made over the years in the door’s wire fly screen.

But it was only the butcher birds that ever entered through these gaps to wait for her by the sink, feathers fluffed calmly. Once or twice, one would come and find her in the dining room and quietly walk back ahead of her to be fed. When I came with the children, she would press food into their hands as she stood behind them at the door, leaning against the kitchen counter for support. So she continued to be one of the estimated 30 to 60% of Australian households that fed wild birds, a statistic that suggests that we need them far more than they need us.

Scientists began to think in the 19th century that birds might have evolved from dinosaurs, when the 150-million- year-old fossil skeleton of Archaeopteryx — which we now know was capable of short bursts of active flight — turned up in a German quarry.

The Victorian biologist Thomas Henry Huxley observed the bony-tailed, feathered fossil’s striking resemblance to small dinosaurs like Compsognathus and proposed that it was a transitional form between flightless reptiles and birds. Huxley’s theory fell out of favour until the last decades of the 20th century, when a new generation of palaeontologists returned to the similarities between the metabolisms and bird-like structures of dinosaur fossils and birds, and there is now a consensus that birds are avian dinosaurs. That the birds with which we share our lives are the descendants of the hollow-tailed, meat-eating theropods is a true wonder that never fails to thrill me.

Birds, like us, are survivors. They escaped the Cretaceous-Paleogene (or K-Pg) mass extinction event 65 million years ago: the fifth and last great dying in the history of our planet, until the Sixth Extinction taking place around us now.

Scientists were able to work out, from unusually high deposits of rare iridium (which mostly comes from outer space) in the Earth’s crust that a ten-kilometre-wide asteroid hitting the area that is now Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula had killed off three quarters of the world’s living creatures by causing forest fires and then a freezing “nuclear winter,” which inhibited photosynthesis and rapidly acidified the oceans. Its blast was thousands of times more powerful than the combined force of all the nuclear weapons in the world today. The dust and debris it dispersed into the atmosphere eventually settled into a thin grey band of iridium-rich clay, which came to be called the K-Pg boundary and, above it, no trace of a non-avian dinosaur can be found.

In historical ironies whose obviousness would shame a novelist, it was geophysicists looking for petroleum in the 1970s who would discover the existence of the Chicxulub crater. Walter Alvarez, who discovered the “iridium anomaly”, was the son of physicist Luis Alvarez, a designer of America’s nuclear bombs, with whom he posited the asteroid strike theory; Alvarez senior had followed in a plane behind the Enola Gay to measure the blast effect as it dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.

The ground-dwelling, beaked avian dinosaurs were able to scratch out a life for themselves in the ferny “disaster flora” that replaced the obliterated forests; their intelligence, their feathery insulation, their ability to feed on the destroyed forests’ seeds, and to digest the “hard, persistent little morsels” as one writer puts it, would help them to survive, and later flourish.

More incredibly, these dinosaurs were already recognisably bird-like, inside and out; capable of at least short horizontal flight like quails, the parts of their brains that controlled sight, flight and high-level memory as expanded as those of modern birds’, while our early mammal ancestors — small, nocturnal, insectivorous, shrew-like mammals — were hiding in clefts and caves.

It is now thought that the world’s oldest modern bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis , could probably fly and was combing the shallow beaches of today’s Belgium, in the way of modern long-legged shore birds, 700,000 years before the K-Pg mass extinction.

Because of a wealth of new fossil evidence in China, we now also know that feathers are far more ancient than we once thought; they didn’t evolve with birds 150 million years ago but are instead probably as old as dinosaurs themselves. In fact, many of the dinosaurs that we have been trained to think of as scaly, were at least partially feathered, including the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex , which may have used its primitive feathers, like a peacock, for display.

Powerful electron microscopes have allowed scientists to determine that the long filaments covering 150-million-year-old Sinosauropteryx , the first feathered non-avian dinosaur discovered, in China, in 1996, were “proto-feathers”; and even, looking at the melanosomes inside them, that they were ginger, running in a “Mohican” pattern down its back and ending in a stripey white-and-ginger tail. Similar examination of the melanosomes of another Jurassic-era theropod found that it had a grey-and-dark plumage on its body, long white and black-spangled forelimbs, and a reddish-brown, fluffy crown.

Scientists are puzzled about what dinosaurs’ feathers, which developed before the capacity of feathered flight, were “for”, but I don’t really care: the fact of them is startling enough, along with the imaginative readjustments we have to make in seeing the fearsome creatures of paleoart that we grew up with, locked in orgasmic conflict, as softly plumaged. Did their young call for them with the same open-mouthed yearning as baby birds, I wonder? Did they possess their own sense of beauty? If we imagine dinosaurs as being less alien and fluffier, does it make our own era’s potential annihilation seem more real?

Read more: Meet the prehistoric eagle that ruled Australian forests 25 million years ago

Over the last century folkorists and psychoanalysts have kept trying to account for birds’ deep hold over our imaginations; as agents of death, prophets, ferriers of souls, omens, and symbols of renewal and productivity. Some attribute it to the power of flight and their ability to inhabit the heavens, others to the way eggs embody transformation. But could it be that the vestigial shrew-like part of ourselves has always recognised them instinctively as the emissaries of a deep past, much older than we are? “We float on a bubble of space-time,” writes author Verlyn Klinkenberg , “on the surface of an ocean of deep time”.

Recently, this deep past has begun to reassert itself as, even during coronavirus lockdowns, burned fossil fuels continue to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, bringing its concentration in the air to levels not seen since the Pliocene three million years ago when the seas were 30 metres higher. To try to help us understand the literal profundity of this moment in the history of the earth, writers have been looking increasingly below its surface, far beyond the human realm, to its deepest, billions-of-years-old strata.

In his astonishing Underland , English writer Robert Macfarlane travels physically far underground into caves, mines, and nuclear waste bunkers, to revive our ancient sense of awe as forces and substances once thought safely confined there begin to exert themselves above ground, but also to convey the enormity of the long shadow we will cast into the future of a planet that has already seen periods of great transformation.

In Timefulness , geologist Marcia Bjornerud argues that understanding the Earth through her discipline’s vastly expanded time-scales can help us avoid the almost unthinkably grave consequences of our actions. We live in an era of time denial, she writes, while navigating towards the future with conceptions of the long patterns of planetary history as primitive as a 14th-century world map. And yet, she writes, “as a daughter, mother, and widow, I struggle like everyone else to look Time honestly in the face.”

Yet here, I think, all around us on the surface of the planet, are our vivacious and inscrutable companions, feathered messengers from deep time, who still tell their own story of complex change.

What lives and dies

At a writer’s festival in northern New South Wales, I remember, a magpie lark landed between the chair and speaker on stage to let forth a cascade of liquid notes, “as if, to say,” a droll friend sitting next to me said, “I too have something to contribute!” while I found myself wondering, yet again, how something with such a small heart could be so alive.

To think about dinosaurs, as evolutionary biologist Steven Brusatte writes , is to confront the question of what lives and what dies. To think that dinosaurs were far more complex than we imagined, Klinkenberg muses, interrupts the chain of consequence we’ve been carrying in our heads, which assumes that deep time’s purpose was to lead to us as the end point of evolution. The history of feathers and wings, in which the power of flight appears to have been discovered and lost at least three times, shows that evolution is not a tree, but a clumped bush. And yet, Klinkenberg writes, “Because we come after, it’s easy to suppose we must be the purpose of what came before.”

The same could be said of mothers. When the time came to choose the photographs for my mother’s funeral, the images of her as a child in Mexico and Canada seemed as unreal as dispatches from the moon. The photographs of our mothers as young girls are so affecting a friend wrote to me, because they show them living lives that were whole without us. Now my own children turn their heads away from pictures of me as a girl, because, they say, “You don’t look like you.” And yet, if our minds struggle to encompass the deep time of our mothers, I think, how can they hope to stretch across aeons?

On my last visit to my mother, I left her on her front step throwing meat to the two magpies which had learned to come around from the backyard, away from the other birds, and would follow her on stilted legs around the garden. When she pressed her emergency pendant the next morning, I missed her call; it was my partner, hearing her faint answers, who called the ambulance. Unconscious in the hospital, she died having never known that she had left her home. When I stopped back at the house afterwards, one of the butcher birds, which I had never seen around the front, was on the windowsill of her dark bedroom, break pressed against the glass, looking for her.

This is an extract from Signs and Wonders: Dispatches from a time of beauty and loss by Delia Falconer, published by Simon and Schuster.

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15 April 2024

How to Write Engaging Non-Fiction: Nature Writing

nature writing - Photo by Geran de Klerk on Unsplash

Nature writing is a type of non-fiction writing in which the beauty of the natural world is observed and described, often as a way of exploring human emotion and experience. The landscapes and natural habitats that are examined in nature writing vary hugely, as does the human emotion or journey that is often probed. As such, nature writing is a broad, dynamic, and fertile genre, full of many different kinds of books.

The varying styles of nature writing

Nature writers might choose to examine what the natural world means to them personally, reflecting on their own relationship with, and memories of a particular place, like an unknown and hidden beach in the South West of England.

They might take a more focused and factual approach examining individual flora and fauna and their importance, like the importance of bees and the role they play in balancing our ecosystem.

Nature writers might also analyse the social and cultural history of a place, and provide a commentary on and chart the change and decline of a landscape or habitat from an environmental point of view.

For books that focus on a particular landscape, there are no limits as to what types of landscapes deserve attention. Nature writing can be about cliffs, lakes, rivers, deserts, gardens, meadows, oceans, remote islands, and underwater worlds. It can be a study of the slices of nature within cities and urban spaces, whether focusing on parks or plants that we find cropping up in pavements.

Nature writing can focus on developments in agriculture, new farming techniques, the rearing of animals and the sowing of crops. It doesn’t have to be focused around locations and landscapes — it can be about the fauna and flora of a whole region, or just one animal, or even a single tree. But the two things that tend to unify all kinds of nature writing, are that the writing conveys a very clear sense of place and that the natural world is explored in terms of our relationship with it.

What attracts readers to nature writing?

Readers are attracted to this genre for different reasons and take away different learnings or feelings, dictated by the particular focus of the book. For example, nature writing that focuses on how the author found a particular landscape healing in a difficult and dark time will offer readers guidance, reassurance, and solace in a time when they might need it most. A reader might feel comforted and seen by this kind of book.

Magical, nostalgic, and literary reflections on a particular place will help readers escape their reality and be transported to a far-flung location and wild places like a foreboding forest, a sweeping beach, a flowing stream, or an idyllic riverbank.

For nature writing that has a scientific or educational element, where an author is making the reader rethink the importance of a particular plant, ecosystem, or habitat, or where they are addressing the effects of the climate crisis on the environment, readers will be hoping to come away with new facts and insights about a particular topic that might serve their activism.

Nature writing by the sea - Photo by Kace Rodriguez on Unsplash

Focusing your work

It’s important when you’re embarking on a nature writing project to think carefully about exactly what kind of writing you’re aiming to create and what the reader who is drawn to this kind of book is seeking to learn from or feel when reading it. Does what you’ve written satisfy why the reader was attracted to the book?

The other important element to consider is what kind of writing best suits your subject focus. Given it is a genre that overlaps with other genres like memoir , science, and activism, the style of writing employed in nature writing is varied. It can take many different forms — poetry about the natural world, cultural history told through essays, literary prose about the personal relationship with the natural world, and factual guidebooks.

Make sure that the form of writing you choose fits with the content and aim of your book.

Tips for nature writing

If you’re developing a book proposal on nature writing, there are a few things that you should keep in mind as you write:

Your writing should convey a very clear sense of place.
The natural world should be explored in terms of our relationship with it.
You can write about any natural subject, from a single tree to a whole classification of flora or fauna, from a particular landscape to a whole country.
Nature writing can take many forms, from poetry and essays to memoirs and factual guides.
Think about the reading experience — consider why the reader might be attracted to your book and make sure your writing offers them what they are looking for, whether that’s reassurance, support, escapism, a new perspective or facts and figures.

As a genre, nature writing is experiencing a resurgence, thanks in part to society’s fatigue with the digital world and to the comfort many have found in retreating to nature and quieter places. The great outdoors is an appealing balm that can heal us and help us relax, acting as a tonic to a stressful day. While we can’t always access beautiful landscapes, we can access the natural world through writing.

Reading list

This list of popular nature books demonstrates the real breadth of the genre, from memoir to activism, and cultural history to more scientific approaches.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Makes Our World, Changes Our Minds and Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

book cover an entangled life by martin sheldrake

From redefining the boundaries of intelligent life forms to providing us with the building blocks of foodstuffs and medicines, Entangled Life demonstrates just how integral fungi are to sustained living on this planet.

Entangled Life is a mind-altering and surprising journey into a spectacular and neglected world. It shows that fungi provide a key to understanding both the planet on which we live, and life itself. This book is a remarkable work of modern science that truly changes the way we see the world. Every sentence offers up earth-shaking facts communicated in an excited tone.

Sheldrake shines a light on a totally unexplored topic with such accuracy and descriptive flair .

The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot by Robert MacFarlane

Robert MacFarlane is one of the most prolific and respected nature writers today. In The Old Ways , MacFarlane travels Britain’s ancient paths and discovers the secrets of Britain’s beautiful, underappreciated landscapes.

Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads, and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes crisscrossing the British Isles and beyond, Macfarlane discovers a lost world – a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations.

MacFarlane is a master at totally immersing the reader in a particular place. To read this book is to be transported to different parts of the British Isles. One of the things that so many people love about this book is the impact it has had on the walks they previously thought uninteresting – MacFarlane forces the reader to rethink the landscapes they’ve become accustomed to and see the beauty in places they were previously blind to. Reading this book feels like an adventure and flight of discovery .

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

As a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer brings together scientific understanding with history and tradition in a collection of moving essays on how plants give us gifts and lessons.

The central argument running through the essays in Braiding Sweetgrass is that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires us to embrace a reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. From asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass, Wall Kimmerer argues that only when we can hear the languages of these other living beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

The book is a powerful vision of a new world of balance, reciprocity, and gratitude. Wall Kimmerer is an incredible storyteller who writes with real compassion and very poetic prose, which is what makes this collection of essays so special and unique.

The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks

Rebanks’ rural memoir is a rounded account of shepherding in the twenty-first century and a frank and engrossing dissection of a vanishing way of life .

In evocative and lucid prose, James Rebanks takes us through the year in the life of a shepherd, offering a unique and candid account of a truly rural life and fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost. Part cultural history of the Lake District and part personal memoir , Rebanks’ passion for his subject lights up every sentence.

At once lyrical and political, gentle and angry, The Shepherd’s Life is an amazing example of nature writing at its finest – a book that successfully draws on the author’s deeply personal relationship with the land, transports the reader into the landscape and rural life of the author, and offers poignant historical and political commentary on the natural world all at the same time.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

H is for Hawk is a profound meditation on grief expressed through the author’s experience training a goshawk.

As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. The book is a moving and candid account of Macdonald’s struggle with grief as she tried to tame the hawk.

Macdonald writes beautifully on memory, nature, and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love. Her descriptive writing about nature is startlingly precise and her reflections on how taming an animal led to the untaming of herself are poignant. H is for Hawk is a fantastic example of distinguished writing about the relationship between humankind and the environment that evokes truly deep feelings in the reader.

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home is taken away and they lose their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.

The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. It is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways. And it makes the reader appreciate the comforts of a warm home and good health. Written with real tenderness and humanity, it is about two people finding themselves in nature.

If you’re interested in writing non-fiction and want to get your work in front of a publisher, visit our free non-fiction book proposal course written by Lydia Yadi, Senior Commission Editor for Non-Fiction at Penguin Random House.

Note: All purchase links in this post are affiliate links through BookShop.org, and Novlr may earn a small commission – every purchase supports independent bookstores.

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Birds and Nature in Poetry

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BirdNote is thrilled to feature poets who write about our feathered friends. Assistant producer Mark Bramhill spoke with Traci Brimhall and Sidney Wade about their work and their love of birds. Check out these new BirdNote stories — and meet the poets who inspired them.

Blue While birding in Florida, Sidney Wade discovers something new and unexpected about the Double-crested Cormorant. Her poem, Blue , captures the sense of wonder in that moment.

Intimacy and the Everyday In this extended episode — featuring three poems — Traci Brimhall shows how poetry can bring us closer to nature.

Remembering Mary Oliver Traci Brimhall honors the life and work of fellow poet Mary Oliver by reading Oliver's poem, Wild Geese .

Meet our featured poets:

Sidney Wade

Sidney Wade is a poet, translator, and professor residing in Gainesville, Florida. Her most recent collection of poems is called Bird Book .

“I’ve always loved nature,” Sidney says. “Landscape is an incredibly important motif in my work.” And birds have been central to that motif — for much longer than she realized.

“When I was putting together Bird Book , I included a few poems that I’d written earlier because they were about birds,” Sidney recalls. “It was stunning to me to go back through my earlier books and see how many times birds appeared in my poems, even before I became obsessed with them.”

While birds appear so often in poetry as to be almost cliché, Sidney points to an even more common subject: love.

She says writing about love is, “absolutely fresh and new, as long as the voice is distinctive. [It’s the] same thing with birds. I think it’s the individual poet’s distinctive voice that makes all the difference.”

For Sidney, listening to birds helps inform that distinctive voice in her poetry.

“Sounds mean a lot to me,” she says. “When I go out by myself, I pretty much go out bird listening rather than bird watching, because sometimes I have a very hard time seeing them. But I have come to know the songs and the call notes and the chips of a great many birds.”

Learn more about Sidney Wade and her work at http://www.sidneywade.com .

Traci Brimhall

A native of Minnesota, Traci Brimhall is an assistant professor of creative writing at Kansas State University. Her first published collection, Rookery , features many poems about birds.

“Birds just seem to have a kind of spiritual or symbolic weight,” Traci explains. “They feel somehow ancient or ethereal – timeless in a way, and I think poets are often attracted to things that have that sort of feeling.”

But her interest in birds began with a common bird, the Red-winged Blackbird. “Perhaps that's part of the greatness of common things,” she says. “They’re so accessible, so ever-present.”

Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese is one of the first poems Traci ever memorized — and one of the few that she can still recite by heart. Traci says geese are “a touchstone for most people. We know them, we’ve watched them migrate, we’ve heard their calls announcing the change in the seasons. And in this poem, they’re telling us we have a place in the family of things.”

Mary Oliver passed away on January 17, 2019, leaving a legacy of evocative writing about the natural world.

“While I grieve her passing and it is a loss for the new poems that won’t be made, there’s still such a beautiful and generous abundance of what she has already given us,” Traci says. “I think she gave us tons of beauty and love and affirmation in her poems.”

Learn more about Traci Brimhall and her work at https://tracibrimhall.wordpress.com .

This series is made possible by the generous support of Jim and Birte Falconer of Seattle, Idie Ulsh, the Horizons Foundation, and many individual donors who believe in the power of great stories to help tune listeners in to nature. To help BirdNote produce more shows like these, please make your gift today . You can make a difference for birds and for the future of our shared environment. Thank you.

Photo credits: Double-crested Cormorant © Nick Shere CC Canada Geese © Mike Hamilton

More About These Birds

Double-crested cormorant (phalacrocorax auritus), canada goose (branta canadensis).

Essay on Birds

500 words essay on birds.

Birds are very special animals that have particular characteristics which are common amongst all of them. For instance, all of them have feathers, wings and two legs. Similarly, all birds lay eggs and are warm-blooded. They are very essential for our environment and exist in different breeds. Thus, an essay on birds will take us through their importance.

Importance of Birds

Birds have different sizes and can be as small as 2 inches and as big as 2.75 metres. For instance, bee hummingbird (smallest) and ostrich (largest). Bird’s existence dates back to 160 million years ago.

There are different types of birds that exist which vary in characteristics. For instance, there are penguins that cannot fly. Further, there are birds that are known for their intelligence like Parrots and Corvidae.

Moreover, we have peacocks which are beautiful and symbolize rain and good weather. Next, there are bats and vultures as well. Birds connect very closely to the environment and are quite intuitive.

They can predict the weather conditions and some are kept near coal mines for the prediction of a mine explosion. It is because they are sensitive to the release of high levels of carbon monoxide. They are quite social and enjoy singing as well. Birds enjoy the freedom of moving anywhere without boundaries.

My Favourite Bird

My favourite bird is the parrot. It is a colourful bird that is present in many parts of the world. It comes in many shapes, sizes and colours. Parrots are famous for having vivid colours.

Some have a single, bright colour while others have a rainbow of different colours. Parrots are usually small and medium in size that mostly eats seeds, nuts and fruits. The lifespan of a parrot depends on its species.

Larger ones like cockatoos and macaws live for 80 years while the smaller ones like lovebirds live for around 15 years. In fact, parrots are quite intelligent. They have the ability to imitate human speech which is why many people keep them as pets.

Consequently, they are also the most sought-after type of bird for commercial purposes. All over the world, people are taking measures to ensure parrots get nice treatment. Many cultures also consider them sacred.

Parrots are highly intelligent and thrive at their best when they are free and not captured in cages. I used to have a parrot when I was little and I never kept it in a cage. It used to sit on my shoulder wherever I went and never flew away. Parrots are my favourite bird.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Birds

Due to hunting, poaching and disruption of the ecological balance, many birds are getting extinct. As a result, birds living in water like swans, ducks and more are also falling drastically in number because of pollution. Thus, we all must take proper measures to help the birds live and save them from extinction. Birds are vital for our ecosystem and its balance, thus we must all keep them safe.

FAQ of Essay on Birds

Question 1: How can we save birds?

Answer 1: We can save birds by doing little things like providing a source of water for them to drink. Further, we can elevate bird feeders and plant native plants and trees for them. Similarly, we can put up birdhouses and garden organically so that birds can feed on insects and worms.

Question 2: Why birds are important in our life?

Answer 2 : Birds are significant for our environment as well as for human beings as they play an important role in every living thing present on earth. Birds are one of the seed dispersers for plants who deliver us food, shelter and medicines and more.

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“Nature Is Literally Our Larger Context”

The cedar waxwing is the glutton of songbirds, known for stuffing itself—even to the point of incapacity—with fruit. In “The Cherry Birds,” Kateri Kosek traces the path of a 1908 act “relating to the protection of fruit from the cedar waxwing” through the Vermont state legislature and, more broadly, considers the value humans assign to the species with which we share our space.

Writing about birds is not new to Kosek; her essay “Killing Starlings”—about a seasonal job that required her to kill invasive species—appeared in Creative Nonfiction #40 in 2011. Her poetry and essays have also appeared in Orion , Terrain.org , and Catamaran , and she teaches college English and mentors students in the MFA program at Western Connecticut State University. “The Cherry Birds” is the winner of the $1,000 Best Essay prize for Creative Nonfiction #69: “Intoxication.”

CNF: The research for your prize-winning essay “The Cherry Birds” began when you saw a cedar waxwing killed by your housemate’s cat. You write, “But before the waxwing fluttered away and flopped to the ground, before I turned away and went inside so as not to see the cat finish it off, we stood there in the driveway guiltily admiring the finer points of its plumage.” What about that moment inspired you? Did you know right away that you would write about these birds?

Kosek: Well, it’s always exciting to see a bird that up close, and a waxwing isn’t a bird that comes to feeders, that you spend a lot of time looking at. It was beautiful, which becomes a key premise in the essay, but mostly I was struck by the tenuousness of the moment, how fragile yet tenacious the bird was, fighting for its life. I did write about it immediately, though not with any sense of the essay you see before you, or of how waxwings specifically would figure into it. At first, the poor waxwing worked metaphorically for how I was feeling at the time. Two essays I had read also colored the incident. One was “Les Oiseaux,” Angela Pelster’s very short lyric essay that opens her book Limber, in which a huge flock of waxwings descends on her yard in the winter and devours the berries off the trees, both magically and destructively (my epigraph). And Leslie Jamison’s essay “In Defense of Saccharin(e)” grappled with notions of sweetness and indulgence and included a passage about birds that were, I think, drunk on berries and banging into windows. So I was kind of stuck on the idea of gorging on sweetness even though it may do us in. I forget why, exactly, but at some point perhaps a few months later I did a search on waxwings. I kept coming across that story of the Vermont senators in 1908, which set the course for the essay. But I am first indebted to my housemate and her cat.

CNF: This essay takes a historical and personal approach to the story of the cedar waxwing. How did you organize your research? Did you find that there was some research that had to be left out?

Kosek: This is by far the most “researchy” piece I’ve written. I definitely tried to represent everything that I found (there were lots of examples to choose from), but it’s possible I could have kept looking. Most everything I used was available online. Perhaps somewhere out there, obtainable through more old-fashioned research, is an old newspaper article that would illuminate what happened when the bill to exterminate waxwings came before those senators. Not having found that, I just worked that gap into the essay.

So, similar to leaving things out was deciding when to stop combing through the research and just write the essay already. As a poet I tend to prefer a limited amount of material, when I can see everything on a page and just tinker with it. This amount of research was a little overwhelming. The sources were kind of slippery and finding them was haphazard. Luckily the legislative journals from Vermont in 1908 were digitized on a Vermont government website. Where I found those, all sorts of supplemental government-issued writings popped up, such as old agricultural bulletins. Several of those happened to contain extensive guides to different bird species, based on the research into their diets to prove that they were (mostly) helpful to farmers. But there was a lot of overlap with variation, and sometimes it was hard to tell what something was and when it was written. Submitting for this theme —intoxication—was actually very helpful. I had thought about the essay thematically for a long time, but the deadline forced me to stop staring at potentially endless amounts of material and select enough to make a narrative.

CNF: Did anything in your research surprise you?

Kosek: Some attitudes toward ecology and environmental protection were more progressive than I might have expected for the early twentieth century. I was surprised to find the origins of the “keep cats indoors” campaigns; apparently, some states even wanted to license cats. A State Fish and Game Commissioner report, after establishing how helpful birds were for agriculture, crunched some numbers about how many might get killed by cats and ended, “Those who are really bird lovers and want to have birds nesting close to the house should try the experiment of dispensing with the family cat for one summer and note the increase in bird life about the garden.” Another article was about how we shouldn’t dismiss the “lower animals,” for they can do us much good—insects keeping other insects in check, for instance. It contained the delightful sentence, “Even such a humble animal as the common garden toad deserves our sympathy and encouragement.” And I was surprised at how popular bird-watching was, to the point of newspapers running lists of the new bird species seen migrating through the locale. That was one branch of this essay I didn’t initially plan on, but searching for the phrase “cedar waxwing” in old newspapers turned up a lot of lists like that, as well as some funny items, like an Audubon-sponsored ball to which guests wore outfits that mimicked the plumage of a certain bird, and then everyone had to guess the birds … maybe something someone should bring back?

CNF: Both of the essays that you’ve published in Creative Nonfiction are about birds. What attracts you to writing about nature?

Kosek: Well, I’ve been a birder since I was a little girl. I certainly didn’t share such a questionable hobby with my peers growing up, but the more I wrote, the more I decided to claim and tap into that rather unique area of knowledge. Nature in general has always anchored me, so it seems to follow that it also anchors most of my writing. It also embodies mystery, which is important for my writing. I’ve always written more personal things too, but often in the slightly veiled form of poetry, where nature may exist symbolically. In prose, recapturing extended dialogue and scenes intimidates me. I’m more comfortable describing exterior elements—birds and landscapes and my movements in them—and they also provide that bigger picture that’s necessary for creative nonfiction to avoid falling in on itself. Nature is literally our larger context. The backdrop of the natural world can prevent writing from being too purely confessional. Where I live, in a river valley in western Massachusetts, surrounded by mountains, hiking on the Appalachian Trail regularly, it’s hard for me not to notice nature on a daily basis.

CNF: How does your background in science overlap or feed into your writing?

Kosek: Actually, somewhere in cellular biology lab my freshman year of college, I abandoned wanting to be a scientist, and went in the direction of literature and writing. I wouldn’t have made a very good scientist, because I can’t read science without being struck by the poetic implications of it. So, you could say I “use” science to render it lyrically. But I’m also very interested in what it has to say. The poetry I’ve written in the last few years has a strong environmental consciousness to it, though it’s also very personal. I weave in various effects of climate change, the disruption of weather patterns, my longing for snow in the winter. We can’t afford to ignore science these days. But art and imagination are important vehicles for it.

That first essay that appeared in CNF, “Killing Starlings” (Issue #40/Winter 2011), I wrote after a seasonal job teaching environmental education, and the scientific principle that says invasive species = bad was at the heart of that piece, but of course it’s more complicated than that. After that essay, I noticed that I was fascinated with the larger concept of how we ascribe value to other species, particularly birds—which ones we as a culture cherish or ignore, which we deem okay to hunt, or despise, and how those biases change if one is a birdwatcher. So science certainly plays a role in that discussion.

CNF: The passage that describes the cedar waxwings drunk on fermented berries made me laugh out loud. Did you start writing knowing that humor would be an important element, or is that something that developed as you wrote?

Kosek: No, I definitely started in a more poignant mindset, but the more I read, the more I found the writings about birds in the early twentieth century to be inherently humorous, and I suppose I wanted to convey some of that. The very notion of passing moral judgment on birds based on their habits or diets, all of which we now view objectively through the lens of science, is endlessly amusing. (Though I’m not against anthropomorphizing the natural world to a certain degree. If we don’t see ourselves in nature, we risk distancing ourselves from it.)

I’m also pretty aware that writing focused on the natural world carries a stereotype of reverence and awe—and, often, boredom for the reader—so I suppose humor is one element that works against that. Most writers who write about nature these days find something that erodes that stereotype. It’s also worth mentioning that although I had a draft and many notes, I rewrote this essay with the theme of “intoxication” in mind, so perhaps I was drawn to the many facets of the word, one being the humorous connotation. But from the start I was captivated by the fervor with which these birds can gorge themselves, so “intoxication” seemed fitting—also the way their beauty can intoxicate us, or the way we need to let ourselves be intoxicated by the natural world if we hope to protect it.

CNF: Your essay ends with a lovely but tragic description of “Albatross chicks on Pacific islands, crammed to the throat not with insects, but with bright bits of plastic” and “stunned, jeweled bodies of warblers piled below a skyscraper.” What would you like the reader to take away from these final paragraphs? Do you believe that writers also have an obligation to be advocates?

Kosek: Ideally, yes, but being an advocate could take so many different forms, I wouldn’t presume to tell anybody what to do, writers or readers. Of course—using that example—don’t throw your plastic in the street, but I’m not sure a reader in America can greatly impact the problem of plastic in the ocean, which stems mostly from six or so nations on the other side of the world. It is easier, though, to put decals on our big glass doors so birds don’t fly into them. So sure, there are measures we can all take, but mainly I just hope readers are at the very least more aware and attuned to something the essay touches on after reading it—maybe the birds themselves, or maybe the current administration’s regular attempts to roll back laws that protect endangered species and environmental regulations.

I certainly find it easier to write than to be an advocate. It’s hard and overwhelming to keep track of every issue and make sure I’m doing something about it, but as a writer, I can follow an obsession with one particular place or bird or story and present that to readers. Of course, the hope is that art can make a difference because people need images and stories in addition to science and facts. A student of mine recently quoted a line from Words that Sing: Composing Lyrical Prose by Mary Ylvisaker: “language has the power to transform people … by adding to or altering the images in the subconscious—the place where 90% of our opinions are formed and decisions made.” I liked that scientific explanation to the sense that writing can translate to societal change.

CNF: What are you working on now?

Kosek: I plan to put together a book of essays exploring what I mentioned above regarding our various attitudes towards other species, particularly birds. One I worked on recently focuses on the Bicknell’s Thrush, a bird considered rare and prized because of its very limited mountain range. Lately, I’m drawn to braided lyric essays, because they allow me to be more of a poet while still writing essays. So that one also has some threads about me and my proclivities. I have another lyric essay about swimming that needs finishing. And a few months ago, I traveled for the second time to Poland, where my father is from, so I have a lot of material from that floating around.

How do you write the sound of a bird?

Writing out the sounds that birds make in text can be a challenging task. Unlike human speech, bird vocalizations do not follow regular language and grammar rules. However, with some simple techniques, you can accurately represent bird sounds in writing. In this article, we will look at different methods for writing bird sounds and noises, when it is appropriate to write out bird calls, common bird vocalization spellings, and how to choose the right descriptive words to capture the essence of a bird’s voice.

When is it Appropriate to Write Bird Sounds?

There are several instances when writing out the sounds of birds can be useful:

In fiction writing, bird vocalizations can help set a vivid scene and create a sense of realism for readers.
In non-fiction nature writing, phonetically writing bird calls helps identify species for readers who may not be familiar with the birds.
In birding field guides and resources, written out sounds help birders accurately ID birds by call when they cannot see the birds.
In poetry and lyrics, mimicking bird vocalizations can establish mood, tone, and rhythm.
In transcriptions of bird language research and data collection.
When differentiating between the songs, calls, or alarm cries of various bird species.

Writing out bird noises is especially helpful for auditory learners who comprehend information better when it is verbalized. Overall, writing bird vocalizations allows writers to add sensory details to their work and helps readers engage with content on a deeper, more immersive level.

Common Methods for Writing Bird Sounds

There are several common methods writers use to phonetically spell out the sounds birds make:

Direct Phonetics

This method spells sounds out exactly as they are heard using letters of the English alphabet. For example:

Chickadee: “chick-a-dee-dee”
Whip-poor-will: “whip-purr-will”
Killdeer: “kill-deer”

This strategy works best for bird vocalizations that have clear, distinctive sounds easily replicated with letters. However, some subtler or more complex bird noises can be difficult to capture accurately using direct phonetics.

Descriptive Words

Writers can also use evocative descriptive words that mimic attributes of bird vocalizations:

Owl hooting: “Whoo, whoo-hoo”
Hummingbird buzzing: “zzzhh, zzzhhh”
Woodpecker drumming: “rat-a-tat-tat”

Words like buzz, hum, twitter, whistle can all communicate a vivid sense of how a bird call sounds. This method offers more flexibility but can also feel less precise than direct phonetics.

Combination Approach

Many writers opt for a combination approach that utilizes both direct phonetics and descriptive words:

Chickadee: “tse-day-day”
Red-winged blackbird: “conk-a-ree”
American crow: “caw, caw, caw”

This blended method provides the specificity of phonetic spelling while leveraging strategic descriptive words to better capture intricate bird noises.

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia refers to words that phonetically imitate or resemble the sound they describe. Some examples of onomatopoeia bird calls:

Cuckoo: “cuckoo, cuckoo”
Loon: “hoo-hoo-ooo-hoo”
Sapsucker: “tuka, tuka, tuka”

When the vocalizations of a particular bird species already have an associated onomatopoeic word or phrase, this can be the simplest option. However, onomatopoeia may not work well for all bird calls.

Guidelines for Writing Bird Sounds

Here are some helpful guidelines for writing bird vocalizations:

Listen carefully and identify unique qualities of the sound like pitch, cadence, rhythm.
Start simple. Resist the urge to use complex phrasing and just capture 1-3 syllable mimics.
Read sounds aloud to test if they replicate the bird call.
Spell sounds as they are heard naturally rather than forcing them into conventional English letters.
Use hyphens and commas to indicate pauses, breaks, and stops.
Consider capital letters for increased volume and emphasis.
Give context and tips about the bird’s tone to clarify the feeling of sounds.

With practice and an attentive ear, these tips will help writers develop effective phrasing to accurately convey bird vocalizations.

Common Bird Call Spellings

Certain phonetic spellings have emerged as conventional shorthand for translating the most common bird sounds:

Bird Species	Call Description
Chickadee	“chick-a-dee-dee”
Tufted titmouse	“peto-peto”
Carolina wren	“teakettle-teakettle”
House finch	Fast, warbled notes
American goldfinch	“potato-chip”

Bird Species	Call Description
Mallard	“quack, quack”
Canada goose	Loud, honking “honk”
Wood duck	Rising squeal or whine
Ring-necked duck	Soft whistle

Birds of Prey

Bird Species	Call Description
Red-tailed hawk	Piercing, shrill scream; “keeeeer”
Bald eagle	Series of loud, staccato chirps
Barred owl	“Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?”
Peregrine falcon	Fast repetitive “kak, kak, kak”

These represent some of the most identifiable vocal spellings that can help differentiate birds by sound.

Choosing Descriptive Words

Beyond just phonetic mimics, writers should also consider strategic adjectives, verbs, and adverbs to describe the tone and quality of bird vocalizations. Helpful descriptive words include:

High, melodic, low, booming, shrieking, rumbling
Rapid, frantic, sluggish, slow, sputtering, brisk
Clear, sharp, eerie, raspy, hoarse, cracking, whispery
Loud, blaring, booming, deafening, faint, muted

Pairing phonetic text with strategic descriptors creates vivid images in readers’ minds and conveys informative details about the feeling of the bird’s unique sounds.

Mimicking Difficult Bird Calls

Some species like cranes, swans, and tropical birds make more intricate vocalizations that can be challenging to capture with basic phonetics. Here are some tips for tackling tricky bird calls:

Listen to professional audio recordings to identify patterns.
Note transitions between different sound elements.
Break longer calls into shorter segments.
Use hyphens, commas, and punctuation to indicate pauses.
Use creative phonetic combinations like “reek”, “skraa”, “kleow”.
Compare to instruments; trumpet, whistle, siren, etc.

With an attentive ear and plenty of practice, even difficult bird sounds can be converted into descriptive text.

Examples of Bird Vocalizations in Writing

To illustrate effective phrasing, here are some examples of writers incorporating bird sounds into poetry, prose, and field guides:

The early bird trills its sweet-sweet, sweet-sweet dee-dah-did-it sings the little bird morning, morning brrrrings! chew-chew, chop-chop trills the robin at work

– “Bird Poem” by Kristine O’Connell George

First came the peculiar cry of a green plover, that seems to be pronouncing the word pill-will-willet; then the louder shriek of a sandpiper, uttering the syllable weet; then a faint sseep sseep , from the bosom of the fragrant ferns.

– Excerpt from Wake Robin by John Burroughs

Field Guide

Pileated Woodpecker Call: Loud, ringing, reverberating; somewhat resembles maniacal laugh; “uk-uk-uk-uk-uk”

Cedar Waxwing Call: Very high, thin, lisping; almost a hiss; “szeee” or “tszzeeeee”

As you can see, there are many creative strategies writers employ to capture the sounds of birds. With practice, you can develop your own effective style.

Writing out the calls, songs, and alarm cries of birds requires patience, an attentive ear, and a vocabulary of phonetic language, but it can be mastered with some fundamental techniques. Listen closely, start simple, use agreed-upon call descriptions when appropriate, and sprinkle in descriptive verbs and adverbs. Phonetically spelling bird vocalizations allows writers to vividly recreate birds’ sounds in text form and provide informative details that engage readers and create an immersive experience. So grab your pen and field guide, find a flock of feathered vocalists, and start translating those tweets, trills, coos, and caws into descriptive writing.

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How Nature Journaling Can Make You a Better Birder

Sometimes, birders become lazy observers. If you’ve ever dismissed an American Robin, then you’ve been there. It’s human nature: Once we think we know what we’re looking at, we mentally fill in the gaps and move on to the next thing. By pushing yourself to record observations in a journal, you will learn to see more and, at the same time, improve your study of birds in the field.

A nature journal is a durable, bound notebook where you can document, describe, and explore all your wildlife sightings and nature discoveries. In its simplest form, it is using words, pictures, and numbers to record your observations, questions, and thinking.

Journaling is a skill that anyone can learn. It refines your ability to notice details and remember what you see. The practice also helps you develop curiosity and creative thinking. You do not have to be an artist or a naturalist to keep a nature journal, but if you make it a part of your regular birding practice, you will become both.

Get a notebook and a pencil or pen. That is it. You are now ready to go. As your journaling develops, you many want to add a set of colored pencils and a measuring tape. Keep the supplies handy and bring them with you in the field.

Start with What's in Front of You

You can journal about anything that catches your interest. The more you practice, the more you will find your curiosity piqued. You do not need to visit a national park or to find a lifer bird. You can find wonder in the sprouting onion in your pantry, a wilting houseplant, or the postures of the blackbirds at your feet. Journaling helps you find new aspects of things you have seen a thousand times before. Ultimately, it is not where you look, but how you look.

Put Pen to Paper

Make a small journal entry at the beginning of your day. Writing the date and location is a great way to start. Once you break in the page, it is easier to keep adding to it as the day progresses.

Use words, pictures, and numbers to record your observations. Each of these modes of data collection will stretch your brain in different ways; they are fundamentally different and complementary.

Writing is a functional and specific shorthand for collecting information and crystallizing ideas. Your writing may be in labels, lists, bullet points, or sentences and paragraphs. But writing alone will only take you so far. Using pictures opens up different worlds. You may use sketches, maps, diagrams, detail insets, cross-sections, cartoons, or symbols, arrows, and icons. Numbers also are an essential piece of nature journaling. Count, time, and measure the world before you. Where you cannot count, learn to estimate. The numbers will reveal patterns that you otherwise might not notice. Each of these techniques helps you not only describe but truly see what is before you.

Don’t worry about perfection or making pretty pictures. These are field notes. The more you work at it the more you will develop skills in writing, drawing, and using numbers.

Practice Attention, Wonder, and Connection

Close observation is the starting place of all journaling. Document as much as you can about an observation. When you think you have it all, try saying what else you see out loud. You will be surprised at how much more is there. Then get that down on paper, too.

Look for relationships and connections between what you see and everything else you know. Creativity is making useful connections between seemingly unrelated things. Remember the three nature-journaling prompts: “I notice. . . ," "I wonder . . . ," "It reminds me of . . ." Stop and ask yourself: How is this like other things I have experienced, felt, or studied? Then ask: How is it similar or different and why?

As you work, notice where your curiosity is pulled. If you find the frayed edge of a question, write it down in your journal and begin to tease it out. Lean into the questions and the unknown. Should you get caught in the web of a good mystery, you might lose yourself in it and not come home until darkness falls.

For more information see the books: The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling and How to Teach Nature Journaling .

You can find hundreds of hours of nature-drawing resources at johnmuirlaws.com , including a free download of How to Teach Nature Journaling .

There are Nature Journal Clubs around the country and around the world. Find (or start) a club near you.

Pledge to stand with Audubon to call on elected officials to listen to science and work towards climate solutions.

Creative Writing

Ruth asawa san francisco school of the arts, about birds.

by Avi Hoen (’15) From the Sarah Fontaine Unit

The world is stupid. No it’s not. Well it kind of is. It sucks sometimes. When you’re on top of it, it feels awesome. Not awesome as in “new pair of shades,” but awesome as in, “a bird just gave birth to an elephant.” That kind of awesome. But it’s only “elephant-birthing awesome” some days. Most days, it’s “bird birthing cockroach” awesome. Not very awesome.

Today the world birthed a bird and that bird birthed another bird so it isn’t very special today. There are a lot of birds being birthed in the world. Some birds are awesome and some birds just shit on your car. A year is like birds. Each day is an egg. From each egg you don’t know what kind of bird is going to hatch. Today could be a “white-throated kingfisher” day, or today’s egg could be scrambled and stuck to the frying pan. As I said you never know what kind of day it will be.

Birds live on the world, usually they don’t live on top of. Birds get the short end of the feather. But know that some bird out there had an amazing day. Be sure to know it had a great time eating berries and shitting on your car. The world is full of chain reactions like this. Bird eats. Bird shits. Shit on you. Bird is happy. You feel like shit. You shit on someone. You feel happy. Someone feels like shit. The world is one happy piece of crap. Get used to it.

I got used to this bird eat bird world when I was little. I always knew I was an insignificant little red berry, soon to make it into a bigger birds stomach. Maybe that bird would be Big Bird. Big Bird taught me the world. Elmo has one messed up world. I hope a bird shits on Mr. Noodle. I take that back, I didn’t watch much TV as a child, probably because most kids shows were like that. A three-year-old shouldn’t be filling their head with singing cloth puppets. A three-year-old should be filling their minds with enlightening thoughts, such as Icarus and how trying to be something you’re not is just a stupid waste of time because we are all gonna die and melt away when we get to close to reality. Sorry, those would be horrible thoughts for a toddler. Maybe they should keep their minds on T.V. and birds.

When I was little I had a bird feeder. It hung from the tree. Then one night a raccoon came and ate all the bird seed. As I said, birds always get the short end of the branch. It’s the circle of life though. Actually it isn’t. Hardware Store Brand bird seed has no place in something as significant as life. Except it does. I eat food from a grocery store too. I do not partake in the natural circle of things. Therefor I am a bird.

Life sucks for birds, some days. Life sucks for me, some days. It depends what kind of eggs I buy at the grocery store. Free-Range, Organic, Cage Free. Life is full of options. I also have the option of buying the Caged eggs. Funny how they don’t specify on those packages that the chicken never saw the outside light. Of course when I shop at the Costco I have all these options and more, but the assumption is made that I am going to feed the entire flock with 18 dozen eggs. That probably stems to the idea of cannibalism. It would be a bad idea to feed eggs to birds. I feel bad for chickens, their young is always sold off, and what isn’t eaten by the humans is given to the pigeons who don’t know what they are eating. Pigeons truly are “chicken-brained,” I don’t blame them for being content with their stupidity, I wouldn’t want to know if I was eating monkey fetus. Makes it seem like pigeons have a pretty good life.

Maybe I’m a pigeon and I can peck morsels of Doritos from the sidewalk cracks. No roses, just chips. Did you hear about the pigeon that grew from the crack in the concrete. You probably didn’t because it didn’t actually happen.

A lot of things in life don’t actually happen. In fact most of the world doesn’t actually happen. It’s a whole sea of thought, full of fish getting eaten by birds. What actually happens is just bird shit. Damn. Oceans seem pretty bleak now. I’m sorry for blowing your mind in depressing amazement.

I read some bad rhyming poetry in a book that went “A geek with a beak will have a life that is bleak, don’t be a geek and speak what you think.” I never actually read that. I don’t need to cite a source. Birds probably don’t use quotes, or MLA 7 or APA, or EasyBib. If I am a bird I can sing my own songs, that I make up in my bird brain and sing them from the branches of the world. No citation needed. Unless… do mockingbirds cite what they sing. No, they probably don’t. The way they find love is a whole lot of bird shit. The way people find love is pretty stupid too. As I said earlier, I am a bird, therefore people are birds, and the world makes the same amount of sense as a fresh splatter of bird shit on the sidewalk.

Birds should probably be recognized because they are related to dinosaur ancestors. Which is pretty cool. That’s only if you like dinosaurs. When I was little I told people Rumpelstiltskin was my great-grandfather. No one believed me. I didn’t believe me. A bird might have trusted my statement for a minute, but even a bird brain is smarter than a lie. Besides, birds are related to dinosaurs, that has to count for something.

OK, it probably doesn’t count for much. I mean, look at how we treat dinosaurs. When we find a dead one we display it, and when we find a decomposed one, we drive cars. It might be a double standard. One day, birds will be the source of petroleum gasoline, and also petroleum jelly.

You know what’s crazy, is that during the oil spill, the birds ancestors, the dinosaurs, killed the birds with their decomposed fossil fuel! Talk about a great way to avenge your death. So I guess having dinosaur ancestors is a double-edged sword.

My guess is that birds have a hate-love relationship with swords. Actually, they probably just hate them. Swords are only good to kill birds, birds would need opposable thumbs to use them properly. Video games lie.

As Peter Griffin agrees, “the bird is the word.” I’m not sure if this has any relevancy to birds and the world, but words are also the world. Words are the sword that the birds can’t use. Blue Jays can’t say great words like “hootenanny,” “cautious” or my personal favorite “cooties.” Despite birds not speaking words, they communicate in their ways. This enables them to be functional members of society. Just like you and me. In fact, I would go so far to say that they are more functional in society then the average human being. After all, they understand the defiance of gravity. And if life has taught me anything it’s that gravity brings you down. Unless you are on the moon.

Scratch that, birds don’t teach us diddly-shit, except what shit is. WAIT! So, basically if the world is shitty, and birds are the all-mighty creators of shit, then technically speaking birds are god. HOLY SHIT!

Writing Resources: Bird by Bird

by Melissa Donovan | Aug 27, 2024 | Writing Resources | 4 comments

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

Bird by Bird is a classic book on writing. You’ll hear about it in writer circles, at workshops, and it will appear on book lists by some of your favorite authors. This book had been sitting on my to-read list for years by the time I got around to reading it, and now I can see why it’s so popular.

“One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life…as it lurches by and tramps around.” — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

When I read books on the craft of writing, I’m looking for one of two things: I want to learn something new that helps me improve my writing, or I want to be inspired and motivated to get some writing done.

In the first few days of reading this book, I got a lot of writing done! Every time I finished reading a chapter or two, I would hurry over to my desk and type furiously. So this book definitely fulfilled one of my two criterion for what makes a good book on the craft of writing.

Overview of Bird by Bird

“There are a lot of us, some published, some not, who think the literary life is the loveliest one possible, this life of reading and writing and corresponding. We think this life is nearly ideal.” – Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

The full title of this book is Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life . It’s part writing advice, part memoir. However, the memoir material is different than what you find in Stephen King’s On Writing , which focuses on his life as a writer, whereas Lamott delves into her personal life, sometimes sharing stories that relate to her career and experiences as an author and other times sharing stories from her life that are unrelated to writing, although she might have used them in her writing.

This is a useful book for general-purpose creative writing, with chapters that cover first drafts, false starts, writer’s block, and knowing when you’re done. This book also does a good job conveying information about the life of a writer, although it’s only one writer’s experience and certainly not representative of all.

Most of the material is applicable to various forms of writing, but there is a slight emphasis on writing fiction and memoir, with chapters on character and dialogue and various bits of advice about drawing from your lived experiences for writing projects.

As a traditionally published author, Lamott offers some useful anecdotes about her experiences with agents, editors, and publishers. These aren’t presented explicitly as career advice, but they do offer some valuable insight. For the most part, Bird by Bird focuses on craft rather than the publishing and marketing side of things.

I’ve read dozens of books on the craft of writing. At some point, you stop picking up new bits of advice that you can apply to your writing. For me, it’s getting harder to find new insights about general, creative writing. That doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to learn — there’s always more to learn! But I’ve already picked up (and integrated) most of the general advice floating around out there. So for me, a book like this serves as a refresher. Therefore I think it will provide fresh wisdom for newer writers while providing reminders for more experienced authors.

And refreshers are necessary. I’ve often been perusing a book on the craft and come across some bit of writing wisdom that I’ve known for a while, but I’ll gain a deeper understanding of it, or I’ll realize that it’s just the technique or method that I need for some project I’m currently developing.

“You must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer — you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act — truth is always subversive.” — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Although I found this book inspiring and motivating, some sections felt dated (referring to late-night talk-show hosts of the 1990s); and some of the jokes either fell flat for me, or I would find myself wondering if something was meant to be taken literally or as a joke. Having said that, I got a lot out of this book. I found the personal stories interesting, and as mentioned earlier, the book made me want to do some writing — and that’s always beneficial.

Bird by Bird

I would definitely recommend Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life to anyone who’s interested in creative writing. Whether you’re looking for tidbits about the life of a writer, seeking new writing tips and techniques, or just want some inspiration and motivation to fuel your writing, you’re sure to find something useful within the pages of this book.

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I think you are spot on eith your review. It has been years since I read Lamott and then I did so reluctantly. When I finished, I was sorry about procrastinating. I thought then that what I got was not so much about craft (not like I got from King, who cites Lamott) but morale building and writing differed from publishing.

I think there’s often expectation from craft books to learn a bunch of new things about the craft, but sometimes we just get refreshers or inspiration or insight into other writers’ processes, all of which are valuable. Thanks, Samuel!

Thank you for this recommendation, I am a beginner writer, mostly poetry, and I will seek this book out. I feel. it will be very helpful..I always write the truth when I write, it’s harder to play pretend. Although I am still learning all that writing involves how to improve, with all. the nitty gritty writing techniques; this is the new journey I’m now on; I’m learning so much and loving this new world of Imagination meets truth, writing, how to write stories, etc. I’d love to publish a little memoir of a snippet of my life one day. I’m working my way to study a creative writing degree. My first unit was Introduction to Creative Writing last year. Writing was always my second passion.

You’re welcome, and welcome to the writing journey.

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Last updated on Feb 14, 2023

10 Types of Creative Writing (with Examples You’ll Love)

About the author.

Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Savannah Cordova

Savannah is a senior editor with Reedsy and a published writer whose work has appeared on Slate, Kirkus, and BookTrib. Her short fiction has appeared in the Owl Canyon Press anthology, "No Bars and a Dead Battery".

About Rebecca van Laer

Rebecca van Laer is a writer, editor, and the author of two books, including the novella How to Adjust to the Dark. Her work has been featured in literary magazines such as AGNI, Breadcrumbs, and TriQuarterly.

A lot falls under the term ‘creative writing’: poetry, short fiction, plays, novels, personal essays, and songs, to name just a few. By virtue of the creativity that characterizes it, creative writing is an extremely versatile art. So instead of defining what creative writing is , it may be easier to understand what it does by looking at examples that demonstrate the sheer range of styles and genres under its vast umbrella.

To that end, we’ve collected a non-exhaustive list of works across multiple formats that have inspired the writers here at Reedsy. With 20 different works to explore, we hope they will inspire you, too.

People have been writing creatively for almost as long as we have been able to hold pens. Just think of long-form epic poems like The Odyssey or, later, the Cantar de Mio Cid — some of the earliest recorded writings of their kind.

Poetry is also a great place to start if you want to dip your own pen into the inkwell of creative writing. It can be as short or long as you want (you don’t have to write an epic of Homeric proportions), encourages you to build your observation skills, and often speaks from a single point of view .

Here are a few examples:

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The ruins of pillars and walls with the broken statue of a man in the center set against a bright blue sky.

This classic poem by Romantic poet Percy Shelley (also known as Mary Shelley’s husband) is all about legacy. What do we leave behind? How will we be remembered? The great king Ozymandias built himself a massive statue, proclaiming his might, but the irony is that his statue doesn’t survive the ravages of time. By framing this poem as told to him by a “traveller from an antique land,” Shelley effectively turns this into a story. Along with the careful use of juxtaposition to create irony, this poem accomplishes a lot in just a few lines.

“Trying to Raise the Dead” by Dorianne Laux

A direction. An object. My love, it needs a place to rest. Say anything. I’m listening. I’m ready to believe. Even lies, I don’t care.

Poetry is cherished for its ability to evoke strong emotions from the reader using very few words which is exactly what Dorianne Laux does in “ Trying to Raise the Dead .” With vivid imagery that underscores the painful yearning of the narrator, she transports us to a private nighttime scene as the narrator sneaks away from a party to pray to someone they’ve lost. We ache for their loss and how badly they want their lost loved one to acknowledge them in some way. It’s truly a masterclass on how writing can be used to portray emotions.

If you find yourself inspired to try out some poetry — and maybe even get it published — check out these poetry layouts that can elevate your verse!

Song Lyrics

Poetry’s closely related cousin, song lyrics are another great way to flex your creative writing muscles. You not only have to find the perfect rhyme scheme but also match it to the rhythm of the music. This can be a great challenge for an experienced poet or the musically inclined.

To see how music can add something extra to your poetry, check out these two examples:

“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen

You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well, really, what's it to ya? There's a blaze of light in every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Metaphors are commonplace in almost every kind of creative writing, but will often take center stage in shorter works like poetry and songs. At the slightest mention, they invite the listener to bring their emotional or cultural experience to the piece, allowing the writer to express more with fewer words while also giving it a deeper meaning. If a whole song is couched in metaphor, you might even be able to find multiple meanings to it, like in Leonard Cohen’s “ Hallelujah .” While Cohen’s Biblical references create a song that, on the surface, seems like it’s about a struggle with religion, the ambiguity of the lyrics has allowed it to be seen as a song about a complicated romantic relationship.

“I Will Follow You into the Dark” by Death Cab for Cutie

If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark

You can think of song lyrics as poetry set to music. They manage to do many of the same things their literary counterparts do — including tugging on your heartstrings. Death Cab for Cutie’s incredibly popular indie rock ballad is about the singer’s deep devotion to his lover. While some might find the song a bit too dark and macabre, its melancholy tune and poignant lyrics remind us that love can endure beyond death.

Plays and Screenplays

From the short form of poetry, we move into the world of drama — also known as the play. This form is as old as the poem, stretching back to the works of ancient Greek playwrights like Sophocles, who adapted the myths of their day into dramatic form. The stage play (and the more modern screenplay) gives the words on the page a literal human voice, bringing life to a story and its characters entirely through dialogue.

Interested to see what that looks like? Take a look at these examples:

All My Sons by Arthur Miller

“I know you're no worse than most men but I thought you were better. I never saw you as a man. I saw you as my father.”

Arthur Miller acts as a bridge between the classic and the new, creating 20th century tragedies that take place in living rooms and backyard instead of royal courts, so we had to include his breakout hit on this list. Set in the backyard of an all-American family in the summer of 1946, this tragedy manages to communicate family tensions in an unimaginable scale, building up to an intense climax reminiscent of classical drama.

💡 Read more about Arthur Miller and classical influences in our breakdown of Freytag’s pyramid .

“Everything is Fine” by Michael Schur ( The Good Place )

“Well, then this system sucks. What...one in a million gets to live in paradise and everyone else is tortured for eternity? Come on! I mean, I wasn't freaking Gandhi, but I was okay. I was a medium person. I should get to spend eternity in a medium place! Like Cincinnati. Everyone who wasn't perfect but wasn't terrible should get to spend eternity in Cincinnati.”

A screenplay, especially a TV pilot, is like a mini-play, but with the extra job of convincing an audience that they want to watch a hundred more episodes of the show. Blending moral philosophy with comedy, The Good Place is a fun hang-out show set in the afterlife that asks some big questions about what it means to be good.

It follows Eleanor Shellstrop, an incredibly imperfect woman from Arizona who wakes up in ‘The Good Place’ and realizes that there’s been a cosmic mixup. Determined not to lose her place in paradise, she recruits her “soulmate,” a former ethics professor, to teach her philosophy with the hope that she can learn to be a good person and keep up her charade of being an upstanding citizen. The pilot does a superb job of setting up the stakes, the story, and the characters, while smuggling in deep philosophical ideas.

Personal essays

Our first foray into nonfiction on this list is the personal essay. As its name suggests, these stories are in some way autobiographical — concerned with the author’s life and experiences. But don’t be fooled by the realistic component. These essays can take any shape or form, from comics to diary entries to recipes and anything else you can imagine. Typically zeroing in on a single issue, they allow you to explore your life and prove that the personal can be universal.

Here are a couple of fantastic examples:

“On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years” by Min Jin Lee (Literary Hub)

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing.

This deeply honest personal essay by Pachinko author Min Jin Lee is an account of her eleven-year struggle to publish her first novel . Like all good writing, it is intensely focused on personal emotional details. While grounded in the specifics of the author's personal journey, it embodies an experience that is absolutely universal: that of difficulty and adversity met by eventual success.

“A Cyclist on the English Landscape” by Roff Smith (New York Times)

These images, though, aren’t meant to be about me. They’re meant to represent a cyclist on the landscape, anybody — you, perhaps.

Roff Smith’s gorgeous photo essay for the NYT is a testament to the power of creatively combining visuals with text. Here, photographs of Smith atop a bike are far from simply ornamental. They’re integral to the ruminative mood of the essay, as essential as the writing. Though Smith places his work at the crosscurrents of various aesthetic influences (such as the painter Edward Hopper), what stands out the most in this taciturn, thoughtful piece of writing is his use of the second person to address the reader directly. Suddenly, the writer steps out of the body of the essay and makes eye contact with the reader. The reader is now part of the story as a second character, finally entering the picture.

Short Fiction

The short story is the happy medium of fiction writing. These bite-sized narratives can be devoured in a single sitting and still leave you reeling. Sometimes viewed as a stepping stone to novel writing, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Short story writing is an art all its own. The limited length means every word counts and there’s no better way to see that than with these two examples:

“An MFA Story” by Paul Dalla Rosa (Electric Literature)

At Starbucks, I remembered a reading Zhen had given, a reading organized by the program’s faculty. I had not wanted to go but did. In the bar, he read, "I wrote this in a Starbucks in Shanghai. On the bank of the Huangpu." It wasn’t an aside or introduction. It was two lines of the poem. I was in a Starbucks and I wasn’t writing any poems. I wasn’t writing anything.

Creative Writing Examples | Photograph of New York City street.

This short story is a delightfully metafictional tale about the struggles of being a writer in New York. From paying the bills to facing criticism in a writing workshop and envying more productive writers, Paul Dalla Rosa’s story is a clever satire of the tribulations involved in the writing profession, and all the contradictions embodied by systemic creativity (as famously laid out in Mark McGurl’s The Program Era ). What’s more, this story is an excellent example of something that often happens in creative writing: a writer casting light on the private thoughts or moments of doubt we don’t admit to or openly talk about.

“Flowering Walrus” by Scott Skinner (Reedsy)

I tell him they’d been there a month at least, and he looks concerned. He has my tongue on a tissue paper and is gripping its sides with his pointer and thumb. My tongue has never spent much time outside of my mouth, and I imagine it as a walrus basking in the rays of the dental light. My walrus is not well.

A winner of Reedsy’s weekly Prompts writing contest, ‘ Flowering Walrus ’ is a story that balances the trivial and the serious well. In the pauses between its excellent, natural dialogue , the story manages to scatter the fear and sadness of bad medical news, as the protagonist hides his worries from his wife and daughter. Rich in subtext, these silences grow and resonate with the readers.

Want to give short story writing a go? Give our free course a go!

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Perhaps the thing that first comes to mind when talking about creative writing, novels are a form of fiction that many people know and love but writers sometimes find intimidating. The good news is that novels are nothing but one word put after another, like any other piece of writing, but expanded and put into a flowing narrative. Piece of cake, right?

To get an idea of the format’s breadth of scope, take a look at these two (very different) satirical novels:

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

I wished I was back in the convenience store where I was valued as a working member of staff and things weren’t as complicated as this. Once we donned our uniforms, we were all equals regardless of gender, age, or nationality — all simply store workers.

Creative Writing Examples | Book cover of Convenience Store Woman

Keiko, a thirty-six-year-old convenience store employee, finds comfort and happiness in the strict, uneventful routine of the shop’s daily operations. A funny, satirical, but simultaneously unnerving examination of the social structures we take for granted, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman is deeply original and lingers with the reader long after they’ve put it down.

Erasure by Percival Everett

The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it.

Erasure is a truly accomplished satire of the publishing industry’s tendency to essentialize African American authors and their writing. Everett’s protagonist is a writer whose work doesn’t fit with what publishers expect from him — work that describes the “African American experience” — so he writes a parody novel about life in the ghetto. The publishers go crazy for it and, to the protagonist’s horror, it becomes the next big thing. This sophisticated novel is both ironic and tender, leaving its readers with much food for thought.

Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction is pretty broad: it applies to anything that does not claim to be fictional (although the rise of autofiction has definitely blurred the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction). It encompasses everything from personal essays and memoirs to humor writing, and they range in length from blog posts to full-length books. The defining characteristic of this massive genre is that it takes the world or the author’s experience and turns it into a narrative that a reader can follow along with.

Here, we want to focus on novel-length works that dig deep into their respective topics. While very different, these two examples truly show the breadth and depth of possibility of creative nonfiction:

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Men’s bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts. In death, they transcend the circumstances of this place that I love and hate all at once and become supernatural.

Writer Jesmyn Ward recounts the deaths of five men from her rural Mississippi community in as many years. In her award-winning memoir , she delves into the lives of the friends and family she lost and tries to find some sense among the tragedy. Working backwards across five years, she questions why this had to happen over and over again, and slowly unveils the long history of racism and poverty that rules rural Black communities. Moving and emotionally raw, Men We Reaped is an indictment of a cruel system and the story of a woman's grief and rage as she tries to navigate it.

Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker

He believed that wine could reshape someone’s life. That’s why he preferred buying bottles to splurging on sweaters. Sweaters were things. Bottles of wine, said Morgan, “are ways that my humanity will be changed.”

In this work of immersive journalism , Bianca Bosker leaves behind her life as a tech journalist to explore the world of wine. Becoming a “cork dork” takes her everywhere from New York’s most refined restaurants to science labs while she learns what it takes to be a sommelier and a true wine obsessive. This funny and entertaining trip through the past and present of wine-making and tasting is sure to leave you better informed and wishing you, too, could leave your life behind for one devoted to wine.

Illustrated Narratives (Comics, graphic novels)

Once relegated to the “funny pages”, the past forty years of comics history have proven it to be a serious medium. Comics have transformed from the early days of Jack Kirby’s superheroes into a medium where almost every genre is represented. Humorous one-shots in the Sunday papers stand alongside illustrated memoirs, horror, fantasy, and just about anything else you can imagine. This type of visual storytelling lets the writer and artist get creative with perspective, tone, and so much more. For two very different, though equally entertaining, examples, check these out:

Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

"Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure."

A Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. A little blond boy Calvin makes multiple silly faces in school photos. In the last panel, his father says, "That's our son. *Sigh*" His mother then says, "The pictures will remind of more than we want to remember."

This beloved comic strip follows Calvin, a rambunctious six-year-old boy, and his stuffed tiger/imaginary friend, Hobbes. They get into all kinds of hijinks at school and at home, and muse on the world in the way only a six-year-old and an anthropomorphic tiger can. As laugh-out-loud funny as it is, Calvin & Hobbes ’ popularity persists as much for its whimsy as its use of humor to comment on life, childhood, adulthood, and everything in between.

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

"I shall tell you where we are. We're in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A dim, subconscious underworld. A radiant abyss where men meet themselves. Hell, Netley. We're in Hell."

Comics aren't just the realm of superheroes and one-joke strips, as Alan Moore proves in this serialized graphic novel released between 1989 and 1998. A meticulously researched alternative history of Victorian London’s Ripper killings, this macabre story pulls no punches. Fact and fiction blend into a world where the Royal Family is involved in a dark conspiracy and Freemasons lurk on the sidelines. It’s a surreal mad-cap adventure that’s unsettling in the best way possible.

Video Games and RPGs

Probably the least expected entry on this list, we thought that video games and RPGs also deserved a mention — and some well-earned recognition for the intricate storytelling that goes into creating them.

Essentially gamified adventure stories, without attention to plot, characters, and a narrative arc, these games would lose a lot of their charm, so let’s look at two examples where the creative writing really shines through:

80 Days by inkle studios

"It was a triumph of invention over nature, and will almost certainly disappear into the dust once more in the next fifty years."

Named Time Magazine ’s game of the year in 2014, this narrative adventure is based on Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. The player is cast as the novel’s narrator, Passpartout, and tasked with circumnavigating the globe in service of their employer, Phileas Fogg. Set in an alternate steampunk Victorian era, the game uses its globe-trotting to comment on the colonialist fantasies inherent in the original novel and its time period. On a storytelling level, the choose-your-own-adventure style means no two players’ journeys will be the same. This innovative approach to a classic novel shows the potential of video games as a storytelling medium, truly making the player part of the story.

What Remains of Edith Finch by Giant Sparrow

"If we lived forever, maybe we'd have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes, and appreciate how strange and brief all of this is."

This video game casts the player as 17-year-old Edith Finch. Returning to her family’s home on an island in the Pacific northwest, Edith explores the vast house and tries to figure out why she’s the only one of her family left alive. The story of each family member is revealed as you make your way through the house, slowly unpacking the tragic fate of the Finches. Eerie and immersive, this first-person exploration game uses the medium to tell a series of truly unique tales.

Fun and breezy on the surface, humor is often recognized as one of the trickiest forms of creative writing. After all, while you can see the artistic value in a piece of prose that you don’t necessarily enjoy, if a joke isn’t funny, you could say that it’s objectively failed.

With that said, it’s far from an impossible task, and many have succeeded in bringing smiles to their readers’ faces through their writing. Here are two examples:

‘How You Hope Your Extended Family Will React When You Explain Your Job to Them’ by Mike Lacher (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency)

“Is it true you don’t have desks?” your grandmother will ask. You will nod again and crack open a can of Country Time Lemonade. “My stars,” she will say, “it must be so wonderful to not have a traditional office and instead share a bistro-esque coworking space.”

An open plan office seen from a bird's eye view. There are multiple strands of Edison lights hanging from the ceiling. At long light wooden tables multiple people sit working at computers, many of them wearing headphones.

Satire and parody make up a whole subgenre of creative writing, and websites like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Onion consistently hit the mark with their parodies of magazine publishing and news media. This particular example finds humor in the divide between traditional family expectations and contemporary, ‘trendy’ work cultures. Playing on the inherent silliness of today’s tech-forward middle-class jobs, this witty piece imagines a scenario where the writer’s family fully understands what they do — and are enthralled to hear more. “‘Now is it true,’ your uncle will whisper, ‘that you’ve got a potential investment from one of the founders of I Can Haz Cheezburger?’”

‘Not a Foodie’ by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell (Electric Literature)

I’m not a foodie, I never have been, and I know, in my heart, I never will be.

Highlighting what she sees as an unbearable social obsession with food , in this comic Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell takes a hilarious stand against the importance of food. From the writer’s courageous thesis (“I think there are more exciting things to talk about, and focus on in life, than what’s for dinner”) to the amusing appearance of family members and the narrator’s partner, ‘Not a Foodie’ demonstrates that even a seemingly mundane pet peeve can be approached creatively — and even reveal something profound about life.

We hope this list inspires you with your own writing. If there’s one thing you take away from this post, let it be that there is no limit to what you can write about or how you can write about it.

In the next part of this guide, we'll drill down into the fascinating world of creative nonfiction.

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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Setting Description Entry: Forest

August 23, 2008 by BECCA PUGLISI

green, brown, dead fall, fallen trees, logs, branches, twigs, fallen leaves, ferns, underbrush, moss, brambles, thickets, ivy, berry bushes, pine needles, pine cones, acorns, insects, rabbits, birds, squirrels, lizards, mice, foxes, spider webs, deer, sun-dappled, shady, shafts…

Sounds branches creaking, feet shuffling through detritus, squirrels chattering, leaves rustling, wind whistling around trunks/disturbing the leaves, birds singing, insects humming/ churring, rustle of animals rooting in underbrush, scrabbling of lizards on tree bark, limbs..

Smells tree smells (pine, etc), wildflowers, earthy smell, animal scents, rotting wood, fresh, stale, dry, damp, wet, scents on the wind from nearby places (water, wood smoke, ocean), wild mint/herbs, decay (bogs, stagnant pools of water, dead animals), skunks, skunk weed…

Tastes earthy air, sweet/sour berries, nuts, mushrooms, wild onions, seeds, bitter, mint, gritty, mealy, meaty, relish, savor, sample, salty, acidic, sweet, flavorful, sour, tart, flavorless, swallow, mild, nutty, relish…

Touch rough tree bark, kiss of falling leaves, branches slapping, uneven ground, knobby roots underfoot, sticky sap, underbrush that tangles/grabs, prickle of briars, slick leaves, twigs snagging at hair/scratching face, tickle of hanging moss, spider web strands on skin, soft…

Helpful hints:

–The words you choose can convey atmosphere and mood.

Example 1: I lifted my face, letting the light and shadow dance across my skin. Bees hummed in and out of the pennyroyal. I inhaled its minty smell and continued on, delighting in the sound of my feet sliding through the leaves.

–Similes and metaphors create strong imagery when used sparingly.

Example 1: (Simile) The trees lashed and crashed against each other like drum sticks in the hands of a giant…

Does your setting take place at night? Check out this similar Entry: WOODS AT NIGHT

Think beyond what a character sees, and provide a sensory feast for readers

Setting is much more than just a backdrop, which is why choosing the right one and describing it well is so important. To help with this, we have expanded and integrated this thesaurus into our online library at One Stop For Writers . Each entry has been enhanced to include possible sources of conflict , people commonly found in these locales , and setting-specific notes and tips , and the collection itself has been augmented to include a whopping 230 entries—all of which have been cross-referenced with our other thesauruses for easy searchability. So if you’re interested in seeing a free sample of this powerful Setting Thesaurus, head on over and register at One Stop.

On the other hand, if you prefer your references in book form, we’ve got you covered, too, because both books are now available for purchase in digital and print copies . In addition to the entries, each book contains instructional front matter to help you maximize your settings. With advice on topics like making your setting do double duty and using figurative language to bring them to life, these books offer ample information to help you maximize your settings and write them effectively.

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers —a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

Reader Interactions

October 11, 2021 at 6:06 am

That helped me a lot!

October 7, 2021 at 2:08 pm

I love descriptive writing but can you help me to write a forest setting description?

February 26, 2021 at 10:01 am

Thank you for this great help…☺️☺️

February 23, 2021 at 4:37 am

Thanks this helped a lot!

January 19, 2021 at 1:39 am

Lovely book, It helped me a lot thanks

August 19, 2020 at 10:54 pm

Are you lovely ladies planning to put these descriptions into an ebook? I’m enjoying all seven of your thesaurus books.

August 20, 2020 at 8:13 am

Hi, Michelle! I’m so glad you’re enjoying our books. Are you asking when the setting thesaurus is going to be turned into a book? If so, you’ll be happy to know that those books are published and available. You can find ebook information on our Bookstore page. https://writershelpingwriters.net/bookstore/

If you have other questions or need to clarify anything, just let us know!

July 13, 2020 at 8:35 pm

OMG! This is powerful. God bless you richly. Please ma, can you help me to proofread my short fiction. I’m begging in the name of God. I have written a short fiction, but no one to help me to proofread it. [email protected] . Thanks in anticipation.

July 14, 2020 at 10:44 am

Sorry, we are unable to do that, but if you join a writing group or have a good critique partner, they should be able to help you. Good luck and all the best. 🙂

May 21, 2020 at 4:59 pm

amazing thankyou so much 🙂

March 11, 2020 at 3:19 pm

thanks! these will help a lot with the forested settings in my book series: the elemental masters.

June 26, 2020 at 5:42 am

Oh wow, your books are absolutely amazing. I’ve read all of them

March 9, 2020 at 1:50 am

Thank you for this, however, could you also do the same setting description based on the setting of a beach? That would be extremely helpful for me. THank yoU!

March 7, 2020 at 10:28 pm

Hi, this is extremely helpful, but could you make another setting description, the same as this one, except about a beach scene? That would be super helpful for me. Thanks!

March 8, 2020 at 1:56 pm

Hi, Stacey! We actually do have a Beach entry. You can find it here: https://writershelpingwriters.net/2008/09/setting-thesaurus-entry-beach/ . And our TOC also contains a list of the entries you can find here: https://writershelpingwriters.net/occupation-thesaurus/

But if you’re looking for settings that we don’t have, you might consider checking out our website, One Stop for Writers. All of our thesaurus collection are there, and most of them have been expanded to include additional entries. For instance, here is the complete list of setting entries you can find at One Stop: https://onestopforwriters.com/scene_settings

Best of luck to you!

March 9, 2020 at 5:47 am

Thank you so much Becca, i just really appreciate it, i love the websites you gave me and it is simply WONDERFUL!!!

March 6, 2020 at 3:12 am

This is wonderful, thank you! Very helpful!

October 24, 2019 at 6:10 am

IT FANTASTIC

January 1, 2019 at 7:15 pm

this really helped me. thank you lol 🙂

July 12, 2017 at 1:21 pm

I am helping a friend open a bar in a small town…the lifestyle here is of the following: Fishing, boating on our two rivers….Wabash and Tippecanoe and hunting deer. Cannot come up with a name to incorporate both of the passions our customers would enjoy. I have gone to your description setting entry for ideas…but just can not gel together this duo!!! Help?

July 12, 2017 at 8:00 pm

Hi, Patti. I’m sorry, but I’m not clear on what you’re after. Are you looking for help coming up with a name for a fictional town?

October 5, 2014 at 2:41 am

THANKS VERY MUCH FOR SUCH A WONDERFUL WORK. MY DAUGHTER WILL HAVE A GOOD RESOURCE OF DESCRIBING WORDS.

February 29, 2012 at 1:40 pm

Thank you so much for this! I have been struggling with my forest scenes for the longest time, stuck on the same small handful of descriptors–this is brilliant. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

May 1, 2011 at 4:48 pm

Thank you very much for these amazing words! keep the work up!

March 7, 2011 at 7:54 am

Thank you so much. These beautiful words makes picturing a scene extremely easy.

February 1, 2011 at 2:13 pm

I absaloutly loved thease words i really needed them to help me get my English paper to life

January 25, 2011 at 6:47 am

It’s a great Help for me. I was looking for such post that could give some interesting wording to describe a greenery and forest scene.

Thank you very much 🙂

April 7, 2010 at 6:13 am

I showed my teacher and she said you rocked. Thank you 🙂

March 26, 2010 at 2:52 pm

Great help for my book! Thank you!

December 13, 2009 at 12:30 pm

Thanks. Great Guide for a descriptive piece of writing A*

December 11, 2009 at 12:26 am

Creatively helpful , specially to beginning writers like me. Thanks for this web.

October 2, 2009 at 10:38 am

very helpful thanxx cood u include more sentance exxampils thanx that wood be helpful! miss m

September 23, 2009 at 11:35 am

April 21, 2009 at 8:29 pm

I LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!! Just what I am writing about!!! THANKS!!!!!!!

August 24, 2008 at 1:17 pm

Thanks for the kind words. When Angela and I started this blog, one of our main goals was to keep it relevant to writers. Glad to know we’re doing alright on that front :).

August 24, 2008 at 12:07 pm

This is fabulous!! I love it!

August 23, 2008 at 8:02 pm

Angela and Becca, you one-hit wonders, you’ve done it again! You’re very good at relating to the reader (and making it easy on the writer).

August 23, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Great job. And I really like the drumsticks simile.

August 23, 2008 at 10:45 am

So perfect! Thanks! I love the simile and metaphor section!

[…] Forest […]

[…] is a forest entry already, but I think that at night the woods can be an entirely different setting, full of mystery […]

Expert tips: Getting your creative writing juices flowing

Tapping into your creativity when under pressure is a daunting task, but there are many simple writing and idea-generation techniques that you can use to ease the pain.

Have you ever struggled to come up with creative, attention-grabbing copy to match that brilliant email campaign strategy you spent a week conceiving? It happens. After countless hours planning something, you can hit a creative wall when it's time to actually do that thing.

Sometimes you're overwhelmed with research material. Sometimes you're bogged down by the stress of aggressive deadlines. Sometimes your mental gas tank is just plain empty.

In this post, I'll share four of my favorite and most effective pre-writing creativity techniques to help you get ideas down. Just like the importance of stretching before a workout, think of these techniques as a mental warm-up before you write your first draft.

Before you begin: Analog or digital?

All of my early stage ideas and writing is done in analog—with pen and paper—before hitting the computer for my first draft.

I prefer this for several reasons:

Promotes singular focus: There are no toolbars or tabs, I'm not bogged down by hundreds of settings and formatting options, I'm not constantly interrupted by notifications, and I don't fall prey to aimless surfing. There's only me, my pen, and a blank page. Free from digital distractions, I have a better chance to focus on a single task or idea.
It's very freeing: When I'm trying to be creative, I don't think in a straight line. I don't work from left to right and top to bottom. My creative process is very unstructured. I scribble left-to-right and right-to left. I scribble in the margins; sometimes there are no margins. I doodle a bunny that ends up looking like a tiger. I write things that make no sense. It's hard to simulate this freeing lack of rules on a computer.
There's less results-driven pressure: No matter what app I use, I'm cursed with a sense of finality. It always feels like a final product. Even brainstorming apps that are meant to give you a blank canvas to generate ideas produce things that look equally at home as a business presentation. But on paper, "final" and "perfect" don't even enter into the equation. It looks gloriously messy and feels like the intermediate step that it is. The informal nature of analog writing creates a far more relaxed atmosphere for creativity.
"The feeling": This one's tough to describe. I simply enjoy the tactile experience of writing with a nice pen in a quality notebook—it becomes almost meditative. I simply don't get the same sensory engagement when trying to create early ideas on a computer.

But this is a very personal preference; maybe it's not for you. If you're accustomed to a screen and keyboard, do it. Or maybe a tablet is your creative buddy. These are simply tools. Tools aid the process; the process creates the product. It's about finding something that aids your process.

An old software developer colleague, despite his technical acumen, preferred using a large whiteboard to figure out complex designs. After hours of scribbling, his whiteboard would be completely covered with sketches rivaling a complex Ocean's casino heist blueprint.

So, let's get started.

Technique #1: Freewriting

This is one of my favorite pre-writing warm-ups: Select a topic to write about. It can be related to the email campaign you're working on or something completely unrelated.

Once you have your topic, write everything you can think of—without stopping. Don't lift your pen from the page or your fingers from the keys. Don't even worry about correct punctuation and grammar. If you start running out of ideas, write "Oh no! I'm running out of ideas…" Just keep writing.

Much of what you end up with will likely be unusable, but that's not the point. The point is to get ideas flowing. And if something is usable, that's a bonus.

Technique #2: Brainstorming

This creativity technique is very similar to freewriting—but less structured.

Like freewriting, you write non-stop without worrying about punctuation and grammar. The only difference is that you don't need to focus on a single topic. Write about anything that pops into your head, even if the ideas are completely unrelated.

Serious, goofy, profound, mundane… Don't discard any ideas; write them all down. Your goal is to ignore the critical part of your brain, ignore the rules of writing, and ignore doubt and judgment.

Free from the structured approaches that have been ingrained in us—especially in the business world—you can come up with unconventional ideas that your "sensible self" usually keeps at bay.

Technique #3: Listing

I love lists… I make lists on how to improve my lists.

During the creative process, I use lists to create categories of words and short sentence snippets that I can eventually use to write my first draft on the computer.

For example, let's say you're creating an email campaign to launch a new product. You can create several lists and jot down words and sentences related to your company's brand and history, your product's features, your product's benefits, your target audience, and any other relevant categories.

You don't need to use all the words and sentences in these lists. They're simply the building blocks to your copy.

Technique #4: Mind mapping

Similar to listing, mind mapping helps you come up with potential words. But it does so in a non-linear fashion.

You place your primary word/idea in the middle and draw a circle or box around it. Then you continue writing down words/ideas related to that central theme, creating a spider web-like diagram that provides you with a visual, non-linear overview of your words/ideas and how they relate with one another.

Mind mapping is one of the few creativity techniques that I prefer doing on the computer instead of paper. Software, such as SimpleMind (one of my favorites), lets you move and reorder entire sections from one branch to another—something you can't do on paper without creating a mess.

Image Credit: SimpleMind

Closing thoughts…

When your ideas aren't flowing, you can wait for inspiration to hit or you can grind away. Neither are particularly effective. The former rarely happens at opportune times; the latter can be counterproductive because the harder you try, the worse it can get.

But with some proper warm-up, you can get yourself into the proper headspace to create and discover le mot juste , the perfect words and phrases to express exactly what you're trying to convey.

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Scots language in literature and creative writing

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Course:	Scots language teacher CPD September 2024
Book:	Scots language in literature and creative writing

Printed by:	Guest user
Date:	Friday, 13 September 2024, 2:47 AM

Description

Examples of children's literature written in Scots

1. introduction, 3.1. lesson planning, 4. application, 5. community link, 6. research, 7. professional recognition, 8. further engagement, 9. references.

This unit by Pauline Turner allows you to explore the rich diversity and creativity of the Scots language through a wide range of literature before applying resources and techniques to your own teaching of creative writing using Scots.

Contemporary Scots is written in the manner in which it is spoken and since there are multiple dialects, each with their own distinct grammatical and syntactical features, it is important for learners to listen to the sounds, intonation and rhythm of the words, as well as the way in which sentences are constructed. Therefore, listening and reading texts aloud as often as possible is a fundamental part of the creative writing process irrespective of the related reading and writing level within the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).

Although perhaps initially daunting, it is this language diversity and the idiosyncratic features of Scots which lend themselves perfectly to creative writing. For learners whose first language is Scots, writing in their mither tongue brings not only freedom of expression, but expands their linguistic repertoire and therefore creativity, while also supporting and improving written English. Where Scots is being learned as a second or third language, first language speakers of Scots can support them in the classroom, particularly in oral storytelling and reading aloud. Overall, creative writing offers a privileged and 'safe space', particularly in fiction writing, to explore identity and experiment with language.

Based on Education Scotland's Creativity across learning 3-18, Impact report , your knowledge of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) reading and writing levels, as per Literacy and English: experiences and outcomes , and your own interests and experiences, you will study this unit to accomplish the following objectives.

Key learning points

to learn about the role of Scots language in literature and its use in informing and supporting creative writing in the classroom.

to understand the integral nature of Scots language creative writing within other areas of the curriculum.

to write a lesson plan for Scots language creative writing, sourcing and evaluating appropriate tools and resources.

to embrace community resources and encourage involvement of learners' family and friends as a bridge beyond the classroom.

While old literary Scots, such as Robert Burns' poetry, represents a more standardized form of the written language, contemporary Scots is written in the same form as the spoken word. To gain a better understanding of storytelling traditions in various forms in Scots, engage with Unit 13, Storytelling, comedy and popular culture . Also study Unit 17, Grammar , of the Open University's Scots language and culture course, where you will be able to gain a useful overview of key grammatical features in various Scots dialects and how these are used.

Undertake as many activities as you can in the units, taking notes on aspects that are relevant for the key learning points listed for this unit. You may want to take your notes in the learning log for future reference. You can also consolidate your learning further by engaging with the Scots syntax atlas .

Learning log

A key point to remember about creative writing in Scots

Since Scots is non-standardised and diverse, it is important that learners use and experiment with Scots language in their writing without the fear of 'getting it wrong.' Rather than excessive correction, the aim of writing is to encourage consistency.

You will start working on creative writing in Scots with an example produced by S2 pupil Oriana Strahan from Largs Academy.

Oriana won the SCILT Words of the World poetry competition 2021 with her poem ‘Power and Peace’.

1. Watch the recording of Oriana reciting her poem (23 seconds into the video). When watching, take notes on aspects of the poem you find interesting and relate to the topic of this course, i.e. language use, themes etc.

2. Are Oriana’s poem and the interview resources you would consider using in your own classroom? Why/why not?

3. Can you think of ways in which you could create a lesson/activities leading to similar outputs by your pupils? Take some notes to gather ideas for your lesson planning.

You will now start to think about Scots language in creative writing and its integral relationship with Scots literature. Watch author and translator, Matthew Fitt, inspire a group of children by reading Chairlie and the Chocolate Works aloud and engaging them in interactive Scots language activities during Authors Live: Roald Dahl Day organised by the Scottish Book Trust .

The organisers list the recording under the following categories:

Language: English, Scots

Genre: Classics, Humour, Local Interest

Age group: 6-8, 9-11

Topics: Scots

First of all, watch an interviewwith Matthew Fitt in six parts recoded by BBC Scotland. Watch all six parts (Scots; Writing in Scots; Minging!; Taking on Roald Dahl; The right words; Quentin Blake)

When listeing, make notes that respond to the following questions:

Why is Scots language important to Matthew?

What difficulties did he have when he started to write and how did he overcome them?

What tips did he give for starting the writing process?

Matthew doesn't agree with excessive dictionary use in creative writing but can you think of any instances where dictionary use is important?

Apart from the words, what else gives meaning when he reads aloud?

How does he engage the children when he reads?

What other warm up activities does he use?

Now think about your own teaching context and take notes to answer the following questions.

Would you use this book with your own class as a creative writing prompt? Why/why not?

Do you feel confident to read aloud in Scots and if not, what other options could you use?

Depending on CfE level, Matthew Fitt's warm up activities may not be appropriate as a starting point for writing. Can you think of alternatives?

Using the reading activity in the video as a starting point, come up with at least two ideas for follow-on creative writing.

How could you use creative writing activities such as this one to interest learners' family and friends in the community?

If it is suitable for your teaching context, you may want to try out the teaching activity suggested by the Scottish Book Trust in connection with Matthew Fitt’s reading. Note that you could use aspects of the recording Book Trust event filmed by the BBC for your teaching.

Remember, even though you might be teaching an older age group, the activity can easily be adapted. For example:

- pupils can re-write elements of it in Scots using a different setting, different characters etc.

- pupils at Highers level could analyse and discuss what Matthew Fitt says in terms of writing in Scots and link his statements to the wider discussion of people writing in Scots in the classroom and beyond. This article in The Conversation by E Jamieson and Sadie Ryan ‘How Twitter is helping the Scots language thrive in the 21st century ’ will offer further useful material for this discussion and can inspire young people to try out writing in Scots.

[You will be engaging in more depth with the article in section 6 of this unit.]

To support your pupils in their creative writing, you can refer back to Unit 2 of this course as well as Unit 2, Vocabulary Old and New , of the Open University's Scots Language and Culture course (Part 1). The Units give guidance on Scots vocabulary and how to work with it. Unit 4 of this course contains a very useful section on working with a dictionary to expand the understanding of texts in Scots and build your own Scots vocabulary.

3. Tutorial

The next activity will further develop and consolidate your ideas with regards to your Scots language in literature and creative writing lesson plan.

To prepare for the tutorial of this unit, take some notes to bring to the tutorial revolving around attitudes to and problems around writing in Scots. The following questions might help you focus your thoughts.

What is your experience of writing in Scots? And what is your pupils’ as far as you know?

What might be difficulties you have to overcome when using creative writing in Scots in your classroom?

What do you consider advantages of using creative writing in Scots in your classroom?

What teaching ideas you have come across in this unit would you like to try out in your classroom and why?

To prepare your own lesson planning and help you get ready for the tutorial, make notes on any of the following resources or activities which are interesting and appropriate and which you might use in your lesson plan for the Application task of this unit.

The Scottish Book Trust has a section dedicated to Scots literacies: https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/topics/scots . Explore the 'Learning resources' section and in particular, 'Using Scots in schools' PDF, and the Scots writing activities there, which are documented from p4.

Also see the following:

https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/creative-writing-activities-for-upper-primary

https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/creative-writing-for-secondary

The Scots Language Centre learning section has great creative writing resources. For those who like poetry, 'The Kist' is a selection of written and spoken poetry with creative writing ideas available at https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/node/id/658 .

In preparation for the tutorial, write a rough plan for a lesson activity involving the Scots language, building on the knowledge and skills that you have acquired through the study of this unit so far. Pay particular attention to your notes from the various aspects of Activity 3 and as required, review Unit 2, Activity 4: 'Key aspects to consider when planning a Scots language lesson or activity.'

Bring this draft plan as well as any questions you might have about planning something suitable to the tutorial session.

You can find out when the tutorial will take place in your study planner document.

Your plan should include the following:

the age group and subject area

suitable Scots vocabulary you plan to use/introduce

a suitable resource or more which you want introduce, to support the use of Scots in your classroom

suitable activities around the resource/s that can help develop your learners’:

understanding of the Scots language

their confidence in using it

their understanding of a particular aspect of your subject area

Remember to reference CfE Literacy and English experiences and outcomes (2020) in your lesson plan. Refresh your knowledge by reviewing the section on writing and taking any notes that you feel might help you in writing your lesson plan.

In the midst of lesson planning it is sometimes good to remind yourself that this is an important stepping-stone to children continuing to read and write in Scots beyond the walls of the classroom. Think about how you could facilitate this.

Don’t forget to share examples of the fantastic teaching and learning going on in your classrooms. Share on social media using #OUScotsCP D , and tagging us in your posts @OUScotland , @OULanguages , @EducationScot .

Now you will finish preparing your own lesson based on what you have studied in this unit by planning the activities and learning outcomes you plan to include.

You may wish to refer to the 3-18 Literacy and English Review (see pages 66 and 67 for specific reference to Scots) as well as the Education Scotland resources on the National Improvement Hub .

The CfE Experiences and Outcomes should be referenced as often as possible.

Using the notes and ideas that you began to gather during the tutorial, complete steps 1-5.

1. In your own time, continue planning your chosen activity, adding more detail where required.

2. Having planned your lesson, you will now carry it out with your learners, remembering that this is a highly creative activity and therefore you may need to adapt your plan according to need.

You might want to gather some feedback from your learners about the activity as well, which you can bring to the course and share with your fellow students.
If required, you can remind yourself of Gibb's Reflective Cycle here.
Accordingly, you should think about literature choice and resources, learner engagement with warm up and main writing activities and your future goals.
What do you think worked particularly well in your classroom application?
Is there anything you would do differently if you were to repeat this lesson?
What are the next steps for your learners?
How will you provide further opportunities to practise and reinforce the use and awareness of the Scots language?

4. Then post your reflective account in your Course forum .

Writing with a clear purpose for a specific audience is extremely motivating. We want to introduce you to three initiatives around creative writing which you and your pupils might want to engage with.

Scottish Book Trust: What’s your story?

You can find out about a number of fantastic teen initiatives run by the Scottish Book Trust as well as links to writing competitions here .

Scots Hoose - Scots in Schools

Scots story competition which runs each year on Scots Hoose website

(please copy and paste this link into your browser):

http://www.scotsinschools.co.uk/index.html

Young Scots Writer of the Year Award

"Stories, poems, spoken word pieces, comics, videos or other pieces of writing – we want to see it all, as long as it's in Scots and under 2500 words or up to ten minutes."

As the topic of this unit is writing in Scots, we want to introduce you to an area where Scots is thriving as a written language – social media. It is important to note that the younger generations are driving this movement and that the way in which Scots is used as a written language here is even driving wider changes in the language.

To start with, please read this article by Jamieson and Ryan in The Conversation on ‘How Twitter is helping the Scots language thrive in the 21st century’.

1. When reading the article, take notes on points covered in this piece which you consider important, especially on the areas identified by the article’s two sub-headings:

The private and the public voice

Writing like you speak

2. You may want to follow some of the links to other publications on the use of Scots on social media, for example Eve Livingston’s recent article for The Face or research showing that people are more likely to write in a minority language such as Scots in posts directed at a specific user. Another fascinating publication is Sadie Ryan’s research on the computer-mediated communication of Glaswegian pre-teens.

3. Once you have finished reading the article, consider what aspects are particularly pertinent when you think about writing in Scots in the context of formal education, again coming back to the aspects of private vs public language use and writing like one speaks (something pupils are normally told not to do!). Take some notes and make plans an what you need to be mindful of when teaching writing in Scots and encouraging pupils to overcome mental barriers they might have due to how they have been taught writing in English, where there is a formal standard they learned to adhere to.

Activity 10

In this activity you will write your reflective blog post for the professional recognition element, which should be informed by your learning during the unit. You should write critically and in some depth about at least one of the following:

your understanding of/thinking about the theme of the unit in general,
a particular experience/incident arising either in the peer community of the course or in your workplace,
a specific piece of reading associated with the theme.

Your post should:

be 500-750 words in length. You may write a longer contribution if you wish.
address the programme’s three Masters level criteria:

1. Knowledge and understanding

2. Critical analysis

3. Structure, communication and presentation

In writing your post, you may choose to:

use one or more prompt from the bank of reflective prompts provided to frame your writing,
make connections between readings related to the theme and your practice,
explore the extent to which you agree/disagree with or were surprised/impressed by an aspect of the peer discussion in the course forum.

Reflective blog

Unit 19 of the Open University Scots language and culture course by Alan Riach focuses on literary prose in Scots language and prose in Scots fiction. This will be a useful introduction to prose in Scots language literature.
Scots Hoose is a fantastic resource for teaching Scots language to children. In particular, look at the 'screive' section for creative writing ideas and resources: http://www.scotshoose.com/index.html
The National Museum of Scotland have collaborated with the Scottish Book Trust to 'Build a story at the museum': https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/resources/build-a-story/
Follow the link from the Scots Language Centre to read 'Teaching Shakespeare, using Scots,' which is an inspirational blog by English teacher, Amy Douglas. This is also available on Glow Scotland.
The Scottish Poetry Library has a large number of resources.
The book 'Addressing the Bard: twelve contemporary poets respond to Robert Burns' (Gifford (ed), 2009) showcases old literary Scots alongside contemporary Scots and is a good teaching resource for language discussion. This resource is available online for free at https://studylib.net/doc/13151635/addressing-the-bard .
Traditional ghost stories are a good stimulus for writing. Author, Alan Bissett, narrates some here: https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/node/id/515/type/referance
In addition to the research you have engaged with, you can explore a research paper on creative writing in the English as a Foreign Language classroom, which takes account of the fact the writing is the most difficult skill to master in the English as a Foreign Language learning context. You will be able to see some similarities with teaching creative writing in Scots and might be able to pick up some useful teaching strategies from this paper, too.
To access Esma Şenel’s paper ‘The Integration of Creative Writing into Academic Writing Skills in EFL Classes’, go here .
Read a sociolinguistic study that highlights how Twitter users modulate how they use Scottish vocabulary depending on the audience they want to address with their tweets. Access the article 'Topic and audience effects on distinctively Scottish vocabulary usage in Twitter data' by Shoemark, Kirby and Goldwater here .

Burns, R. (n.d) 'Tam o Shanter' at Scotland on Screen [Online]. Available at https://scotlandonscreen.org.uk/browse-films/007-000-002-065-c (Accessed 4th December 2023).

Dempster, M. (2017) 'Ma Emoji Tae Scots Dictionar', in Mind yer Language? [Online]. Available at http://mindyerlanguage.scot/ma-emoji-tae-scots-dictionar (Accessed 4th December 2023

Dictionary of the Scots Language [Online]. Available at https://dsl.ac.uk/ (Accessed 4th December 2023).

Education Scotland (2013) 'Creativity Across learning 3-18: Impact report,' [Online]. Available at https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/cre39-impact-report.pdf (Accessed 4th December 2023).

Jamieson, E. and Ryan, S. (2019) ‘How Twitter is helping the Scots language thrive in the 21st century’, The Conversation, 13 August [Online] Available at https://theconversation.com/how-twitter-is-helping-the-scots-language-thrive-in-the-21st-century-121783 (Accessed 4th December 2023)

Potter, B. translated by McGeachie L. (n.d.) 'The Tale O Peter Kinnen' [Online]. Available at https://www.scotslanguage.com/Education/Audio_resources/The_Tale_O_Peter_Kinnen_uid2294 (accessed 4th December 2023).

Robertson, C. (2020) 'Hot seat', British Council: Teaching English [Online]. Available at https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/hot-seat-0 (Accessed 4th December 2023).

Scottish Book Trust (2020) 'Roald Dahl Day with Matthew Fitt' [Online]. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e2jj5v/play/ard6gw/p0482rf5 (Accessed 22 January 2024).

Scottish Book Trust (2020) 'Scots' [Online]. Available at https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/topics/scots (Accessed 4th December 2023)

Scottish Book Trust (2020) 'Creative writing resources for upper primary' [Online]. Available at https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/creative-writing-activities-for-upper-primary (4th December 2023).

Scottish Book Trust (2020) 'Creative writing resources for secondary' [Online]. Available at https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning-resources/creative-writing-for-secondary (4th December 2023).

Scottish Government (2020) 'Literacy and English experiences and outcomes ' , Curriculum for Excellence [Online]. Available at https://education.gov.scot/Documents/literacy-english-eo.pdf (Accessed 22 January 2024)

Scots Language Centre (2020) 'The Kist' [Online]. Available at https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/node/id/658 (Accessed 4th December 2023).

Scots Syntax Atlas (2020) [Online]. Available at https://scotssyntaxatlas.ac.uk/ (Accessed 4th December 2023).

Şenel, E. (2018) ‘The Integration of Creative Writing into Academic Writing Skills in EFL Classes’, International Journal of Languages Education and Teaching , vol. 6, issue 2, pp. 115-20.

Shoemark, P., Kirby, J. and Goldwater, S. (2017) ‘Topic and audience effects on distinctively Scottish vocabulary usage in Twitter data’ [Online] Available at https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W17-4908.pdf (4th December 2023) DOI: 10.18653/v1/W17-4908

University of Edinburgh (2020) 'Reflection toolkit' [Online]. Available at https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle (Accessed 4th December 2023)

Youtube (2013) 'Freewriting', [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O0EMX0nnl4 (Accessed 4th December 2023)

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How to Describe Birds in Writing (17 Best Tips & Examples)
Here is how to describe birds in writing: Describe birds in writing by focusing on their feathers, songs, movements, and behaviors. Use vivid words like "iridescent" or phrases like "wings slicing the air". Employ sensory descriptions, symbolic meanings, and cultural contexts to bring avian characters to life in your narratives.
25 Creative Writing Prompts About Birds » JournalBuddies.com
25 Creative Writing Prompts About Birds. Write an exchange between a talking parrot and a pirate captain. A family of birds is migrating when a strong gust of wind knocks the baby bird out of the sky. Write a story about the little bird searching for and reuniting with its family. (You could use famous movies like Finding Nemo as inspiration.)
25 Writing Prompts About Birds
25 Writing Prompts about Birds. An unexpected friendship: Imagine a world where humans have the ability to understand and converse with birds. One day, a young girl befriends a rare bird species which leads her into a path of environmental activism. In your story, explore the development of this unique friendship and how it impacts the young ...
12 Nature-Inspired Creative Writing Prompts
Nature inspires, and so do these creative writing prompts. Today's post includes a selection of prompts from my book, 1200 Creative Writing Prompts. Enjoy! Creative writing prompts are excellent tools for writers who are feeling uninspired or who simply want to tackle a new writing challenge. Today's creative writing prompts focus on nature.
How to Write an Essay on Birds: 9 Interesting Areas to Focus
Interesting Facts for Writing an Essay on Birds. Feather distinction. One of the most interesting topics for an essay on birds is their feather diversity. Birds have distinctive appearances in structure, order, and color. Feather distinction is one of the distinguishing characteristics between species. However, some species have different ...
Birds
PRACTICE. Birds can add a touch of detail that lights up your writing with life. Practice writing about birds. If it would help, go outside with a notebook and a pen and look for them. They're everywhere. As you describe them, think about what they communicate subconsciously. Write for fifteen minutes. Post your "bird watching" in the comments.
Animal Writing Prompts: Explore Creatures Through Words
Combining them can create a fun and creative experience! Animal writing prompts allow you to explore the world of creatures through words. From describing the graceful flight of a bird to expressing the raw power of a lion, these prompts unleash your imagination. Dive into the animal kingdom and let your words soar!
3 Essays on Bird-watching and Writing
The settings where birding and writing take place are different from one another. External details are different, but inner emotions and various milestones are similar. Stage 1. Thrilled, Enthusiastic. Whether invigorated by an inspiring idea to write about or convinced that today is a good day to bird, I begin with outrageous optimism.
Nature Writing Examples
Journal Examples: Keeping Track of Your Tracks. One of the many lost arts of our modern time is that of journaling. While keeping a journal is a beneficial practice for all, it is especially crucial to nature writers. John A. Murray, author of Writing About Nature: A Creative Guide, begins his study of the nature writing practice with the ...
Exploring Nature Writing: Examples and Tips for Writing About the Wild
Nature writing has grown in popularity as a genre in recent years, but writing about nature in general can also be a great creative exercise, as it encourages you to observe details and put those observations into words. You can use these tips to practice nature writing: 1. Always keep a notebook handy. The first thing you want to do is ensure ...
Friday essay: on birds
Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, UTS, University of Technology Sydney Disclosure statement. ... A dead bird is seen on a burnt-out property in Bruthen South, Victoria, in January 2019., after ...
How to Write Engaging Non-Fiction: Nature Writing
Nature writing can be about cliffs, lakes, rivers, deserts, gardens, meadows, oceans, remote islands, and underwater worlds. It can be a study of the slices of nature within cities and urban spaces, whether focusing on parks or plants that we find cropping up in pavements. Nature writing can focus on developments in agriculture, new farming ...
Birds and Nature in Poetry
Blue. While birding in Florida, Sidney Wade discovers something new and unexpected about the Double-crested Cormorant. Her poem, Blue, captures the sense of wonder in that moment. Intimacy and the Everyday. In this extended episode — featuring three poems — Traci Brimhall shows how poetry can bring us closer to nature. Remembering Mary Oliver.
Essay on Birds for Students and Children
500 Words Essay On Birds. Birds are very special animals that have particular characteristics which are common amongst all of them. For instance, all of them have feathers, wings and two legs. Similarly, all birds lay eggs and are warm-blooded. They are very essential for our environment and exist in different breeds.
"Nature Is Literally Our Larger Context"
I'm more comfortable describing exterior elements—birds and landscapes and my movements in them—and they also provide that bigger picture that's necessary for creative nonfiction to avoid falling in on itself. Nature is literally our larger context. The backdrop of the natural world can prevent writing from being too purely confessional.
How do you write the sound of a bird?
Examples of Bird Vocalizations in Writing. To illustrate effective phrasing, here are some examples of writers incorporating bird sounds into poetry, prose, and field guides: ... As you can see, there are many creative strategies writers employ to capture the sounds of birds. With practice, you can develop your own effective style.
How Nature Journaling Can Make You a Better Birder
By pushing yourself to record observations in a journal, you will learn to see more and, at the same time, improve your study of birds in the field. A nature journal is a durable, bound notebook where you can document, describe, and explore all your wildlife sightings and nature discoveries. In its simplest form, it is using words, pictures ...
About Birds
About Birds. by Avi Hoen ('15) From the Sarah Fontaine Unit. The world is stupid. No it's not. Well it kind of is. It sucks sometimes. When you're on top of it, it feels awesome. Not awesome as in "new pair of shades," but awesome as in, "a bird just gave birth to an elephant.". That kind of awesome.
A Nest of Words: What Kind of Writer-Bird Are You?
Ruby-throated Hummingbird. The Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) builds its nest out of ephemeral things—dandelion down, thistle, spider silk, moss—crafting a thimble-sized home that is both flexible and surprisingly strong. If you're a Ruby-throated Hummingbird as a writer, you often start with a wisp of idea, a flash of ...
Writing Resources: Bird by Bird
For the most part, Bird by Bird focuses on craft rather than the publishing and marketing side of things. I've read dozens of books on the craft of writing. At some point, you stop picking up new bits of advice that you can apply to your writing. For me, it's getting harder to find new insights about general, creative writing.
10 Types of Creative Writing (with Examples You'll Love)
10 Types of Creative Writing (with Examples You'll Love) A lot falls under the term 'creative writing': poetry, short fiction, plays, novels, personal essays, and songs, to name just a few. By virtue of the creativity that characterizes it, creative writing is an extremely versatile art. So instead of defining what creative writing is, it ...
Setting Description Entry: Forest
Setting is much more than just a backdrop, which is why choosing the right one and describing it well is so important. To help with this, we have expanded and integrated this thesaurus into our online library at One Stop For Writers.Each entry has been enhanced to include possible sources of conflict, people commonly found in these locales, and setting-specific notes and tips, and the ...
Expert tips: Getting your creative writing juices flowing
It looks gloriously messy and feels like the intermediate step that it is. The informal nature of analog writing creates a far more relaxed atmosphere for creativity. "The feeling": This one's tough to describe. I simply enjoy the tactile experience of writing with a nice pen in a quality notebook—it becomes almost meditative.
Scots language in literature and creative writing
You will start working on creative writing in Scots with an example produced by S2 pupil Oriana Strahan from Largs Academy. Oriana won the SCILT Words of the World poetry competition 2021 with her poem 'Power and Peace'. 1. Watch the recording of Oriana reciting her poem (23 seconds into the video). When watching, take notes on aspects of ...

How to Describe Birds in Writing (17 Best Tips & Examples)

Types of Birds in Writing

17 Best Tips for Describing Birds in Writing

1. Feathered Flourish – Focus on Feathers

2. Melodic Metaphors – Use Birdsong

3. Winged Whimsy – Capture Movement

4. Aerial Acrobatics – Highlight Flight Patterns

5. Nest Narratives – Describe Bird Habitats

6. Beak Banter – Focus on Vocalizations and Calls

7. Plumage Palette – Explore Colors and Patterns

8. Avian Antics – Capture Characterful Behavior

9. Sensory Symphony – Engage All Senses

10. Behavioral Beacon – Signal Seasonal Changes

11. Symbolic Soaring – Use Birds as Symbols

12. Dynamic Duos – Contrast with Characters

13. Rhythmic Renderings – Mimic Bird Movement in Prose

14. Habitat Harmony – Align Descriptions with Environment

15. Perspective Play – Vary Your Viewpoint

16. Emotional Echo – Reflect Mood through Birds

17. Cultural Context – Weave in Folklore and Myth

30 Best Words to Describe a Bird in Writing

30 Best Phrases to Describe a Bird in Writing

3 Examples of How to Describe Birds in Writing (in three Different Genres)

Fantasy Genre: The Enchanted Eagle

Mystery Genre: The Clue of the Crimson Cardinal

Romance Genre: The Dance of the Doves

Final Thoughts: How to Describe Birds in Writing

25 Creative Writing Prompts About Birds

Fabulous Writing Resources

25 Writing Prompts About Birds

25 Writing Prompts about Birds

How to Write an Essay on Birds: 9 Interesting Areas to Focus

Interesting Facts for Writing an Essay on Birds

Migration marvels and global distribution

Nesting prowess

Egg laying facts

Sociocultural rituals

Cognitive capacity

Vocal abilities

Life expectancy

How Do I Write an Essay on Birds?

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