Category: Animals

Walkabout

January 8, 2014

Yesterday, with Sue (it was her birthday!) and her kids, I visited an animal sanctuary called Australian Walkabout Wildlife Park.

It was a strange sort of animal park. It’s mostly open (and mostly uncultured bushland) with scattered enclosures. Many roos and wallabies and emus walk freely throughout the park and (the large ones at least) are surprisingly unafraid.

We could pat (but not feed) them. Their fur is surprisingly soft, almost in some cases like velvet!

The emus on the other hand are terrifying, especially to the kids who were smaller than the birds!

We noticed a small wallaby (or perhaps pademelon) sitting in the shade who didn’t hop away like her ilk. We quietly approached and were amazed to see a little head peep out from her pouch:

There was also one kangaroo that was particularly friendly. I think he thought he was someone’s pet:

Amongst the other animals on display were quolls…

And Tasmanian devils:

Both were being fed kangaroo parts, which was a bit ironic and grisly. The circle of life, I suppose!

I’m a big fan of kangaroos and enjoyed the park quite a bit. While it was smaller and less flashy than a place like Featherdale, I think it’s a better (and less busy) place to see the animals in a more natural environment.

That’s dad with a dog, which was taken later in the day. The dog belongs to an old family friend who was in the nunnery with mum.

In the afternoon, I became a photographers assistant while my brother took some long-exposure neutral density beach photography. Expect results on his blog…

Here’s dinner; a burger with beetroot and carrot on it:

Delicious!

It Felt Like A Sheep

December 31, 2013

Both our hotels had fantastic breakfast buffets the likes of which I hadn’t seen since Hawaii. Apparently that’s a thing here. I should stay in more Australian hotels!

On the way back from the Blue Mountains we stopped at this place:

A ‘wildlife park’ is a small zoo, and in Australia they frequently prioritize Australian animals including birds. We were surprised to find Featherdale right in the middle of suburbia, but this didn’t affect the quality of this 40-year old park.

They’ve got about a billion birds, half a billion koalas and a wide selection of other Australian fauna including kangaroos, echidna, various reptiles, bats, wombats (active ones even!) and quokkas, like the baby shown above.

The animals are displayed nicely in large and well landscaped enclosures. The big draw of the park though is how close you can get to certain favorites:

In order, those are a wallaby, a bear, and a kangaroo. The bear was dense and immovable, and his fur felt almost exactly like a sheep. He’s also extremely old for his race, being almost 15.

Bernard was in bird-photo-heaven at the park, taking many snaps of everything with feathers. If he doesn’t do a blog soon showcasing some of the great photos he has taken, I’m going to destroy his birthday gifts 🙂

As I mentioned above, Featherdale has an enormous Koala population. I suspect one reason is they accept orphaned Australian animals and have a constant influx of Koalas. As a result you can pat one any time the park is open, which is very popular with the foreign tourists!

Here’s another shot of an Australian animal eating at the park:

And an interesting example of the difference in appearance between two animals of the same species:

After Featherdale we continued back to Randwick, and a lazy evening of eating, movie-watching (Pacific Rim and Kick-Ass 2) and falling asleep before the New Year’s Eve fireworks!

Electric Eye (aka. Wildlife Camera Once Again!)

November 17, 2013

It’s time once again for a roundup of the latest animals snaps from our wildlife camera. I left it next to our front porch for a week or so, and then on the back patio looking at the house until the SD card filled up. Of the 753 photos it snapped, about 40 had animals on them. In these highlight photos, the time will be wrong but the temperature should be correct.

It’s a bit blurry, and therefore I can’t say with absolute certainty, but I think the above is a skunk.

That’s a chipmunk! If you can’t see it, look closely just to the right of where the electrical cord reaches the ground. Chipmunks are absolute buggers to catch on this camera, since they run at the speed of light. But we believe we have a chipmunk megalopolis under our house, and it was only a matter of time before I got a shot of one. Wish it was clearer though…

Now that is a mystery. Obviously mammal, with soft cuddle fur, cute short ears and a curious demeanor? My vote is either a lion or bear cub. Sadly no other snaps of this elusive beast were to be seen, so for now I’m filing it in the ‘crypto’ category.

That’s a hare. Or maybe a jackrabbit. Or perhaps just a rabbit. Either way, it’s cute and has short ears and I’m a bit surprised it’s still up and about in the freezing nights. Rabbits are very common in our backyard, and this year we were treated to a baby that we watched grow up over a period of months. I think they have a rabbit hole under the ferns that grow at the back of our yard.

The once-elusive possum is hidden no longer! There were dozens of snaps of this guy, over a period of about two weeks (always at night). I guess he likes prowling our back patio.

No matter where or when you put the camera, there will always be more squirrel photos than of anything else! This one was my favourite, showing as it does the squirrel critiquing the angle at which I have placed the camera. Or possibly trying to establish the field of view so he could set himself up best for a shot? Look how warm and thick his fur coat looks! I love our squirrels 🙂

And then there was one other photo, showing a most unusual beast…

I wonder Emi was looking at?

Robot Claw