Ripe fruit plunks to the ground and rolls to the road at my left. That instant, the cassowary bursts from a tangle of ferns outside Clump Mountain National Park near Mission Beach, Australia.

The bird in question? Casuarius casuarius, the southern cassowary, fruit-eater-in-chief of Australia’s rain forests. Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly ...

Leny Capuchino, owner of Leny's Fruit and Veg Stall in Mission Beach, has captured the moment an inquisitive cassowary interrupted her chicken's breakfast on her Cassowary Coast property.