#6 Encounters with wild Aussie animals

Australia offers an exciting range of unique wild animals.

For example, consider the Aussie pelicans:

The Australian pelican is built for long-distance travel. One of the largest pelicans in the pelican family, with a light skeleton and a wingspan of over eight feet, it can be airborne all day and deep into the night, riding far and high on rising thermals. When rare weather systems bring heavy rains every ten years, huge numbers of Australian pelicans abandon the sea and coastal waters and embark on a mass pilgrimage to a place a thousand miles inland. It’s the last place you would look for one of their kind – the Australian Outback, one of the driest, hottest places on the planet.

They are heading for Lake Eyre, an empty, salt-crusted lake bed that covers an area the size of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, combined. It lies 50 feet below sea level, making it the lowest point in Australia, a vast drainage basin in the heart of desert. The floods from the rains are headed here, too, filling dry riverbeds with water which will transform this desolate place into pelican heaven. With the water comes a host of new life that offers a feast to the birds – fish and frogs, crustaceans and shrimp. The pelicans settle in at Lake Eyre for as long as the water lasts.  Here they court and breed and raise a new generation in this unlikely sanctuary.

But what exactly triggers their journey? How do they find their way? How do they know what is waiting for them? And where do they go when they leave?  If this interests you, click here.

First encounter

Here is the creature that first attracted our attention.  He was lives in the park directly across the street from our Jazz Corner Hotel in Melbourne.  During the day, he is invisible.  He sleeps in secret places.  At night, however, he is very active. 
Click on the play arrow and you will view a video that Elena made of this fellow in action.  We found him in a tree an hour after nightfall.  He appeared to be neither frightened nor adverse to our presence and our use of a flashlight.

The bushy-tailed Brushtail Possums are agile climbers and are more often heard than seen, especially during the mating season. About the size of a small cat, they have silvery fur, large ears as well as the dark bushy tail.  They are quite different from the possums seen in Ohio (pic to the right).

While Brushtail populations are declining in some regional areas due to habitat loss, urban populations indicate an adaptation to the presence of humans. In the mainland states, possum trapping is legal when attempting to evict possums from human residences (e.g. roofs), however possums must be released after dusk within 24 hours of capture, no more than 50 meters from the trapping site.  They are thus a protected species.

Second Encounter

Most people know that kangaroos are uniquely found in Australia and its offshore islands.  Most people do not know that there are sixty different kinds of hopping mammals with a pouch found in Australia.  Among these animals, “kangaroos” is the term referring to the larger types and “wallabees” is the term for the smaller types.  Thus one has the red kangaroo, antilopine kangaroo, eastern grey kangaroo, and western grey kangaroo.  All of these are classified as belonging to the family of marsupial (meaning, “pouched”) macropods (meaning “large footed”).   Australia also has two varieties of tree kangaroos that seldom set foot on land.  Click to see these unusual creatures in action.

Thanks to their large feet, kangaroos can leap forward some 30 feet (9 meters) in a single bound, and travel more than 30 ​miles (48 ​kilometers)​ per hour​. Kangaroos use their strong tails for balance while jumping forward.  Elena and I came upon a Wallaby that was munching grass in an abandoned field next to the beach.  When approached, the Wallaby took flight.

We waited as the Wallaby began to munch on the grasses again.  I approached cautiously.  I took a step forward at each moment when the Wallaby was occupied with eating.  Soon, I was two steps away from the Wallaby.  I noticed how the Wallaby used its front paws and tail to hop forward just one step.  When I was only a half-meter away, the Wallaby noticed me and sped off with giant leaps forward.  All in all, given our week in this area, we observed only this single instance of a macropod.

I interviewed some Aussies asking them how often they encountered roos.  When working in the outback, they are observed with great frequency.  In the city, hardly at all.  Although one lady said she was walking out into her garden and saw a giant roo munching on her tomatoes.

​Kangaroos live in coastal areas of Australia. Since humans also prefer the coastal areas, towns and cities have pushed the “roos” (as the Aussies call them) out of their habitats. Roos live in small groups (called “mobs” by Australians) of up to fifty. If threatened, kangaroos pound the ground with their strong feet in warning.  Kangaroos kick opponents, claw them with their short forefeet, and sometimes bite them. ​

​Female kangaroos sport a pouch on their belly, made by a fold in the skin, to cradle baby kangaroos called joeys. Newborn joeys are just one inch long (2.5 centimeters) at birth, or about the size of a kidney bean. After birth, joeys travel, unassisted, through their mom’s thick fur to the comfort and safety of the pouch. A newborn joey can’t suckle or swallow, so the kangaroo mom uses her muscles to pump milk down its throat. At around 4 months, the joey emerges from the pouch for short trips and to graze on grass and small shrubs. At 10 months, the joey is mature enough to leave the pouch for good.

Third Encounter

Who has heard about Quokkas?  Neither Elena or I did?  How about yourself?

People visiting their island are describing them as the “world’s friendliest and happiest animal” and a photo [below] of a Quokka snapping a selfie has proven why.

Around the size of a cat, with the tail of a rat, the nocturnal marsupials can only be found on Australia’s Rottnest Island [four square km.] and a handful of smaller islands around the coast of Western Australia.  Part of the kangaroo and wallaby family, it has become something of a tourist attraction and visitors flock to the island to try snap a photo with the friendly Quokka.

“They [the quokkas] just walk up to you,” Cambo said.  “I put down my GoPro [camera] and it jumped at me as if to say come ‘come back’.”  Here is the accidental pic taken.  Quokkas, famous for posing in selfies, are native to Rottnest Island where about 10,000 live a sheltered life free from predators or traffic.

Fourth Encounter

The Silver Gull commonly known as the Seagull, is generally found right across Australia, virtually at any watered habitat that is close to land.  Birds flock in high numbers when there is a food sources, mostly seen around departing and arriving fishing boats, but they seldom venture far out to sea.

Like many other gull species, the Silver Gull has become a successful scavenger, stealing from unattended food containers, open bins or tips. They can also become quite aggressive when scavenging and often pester humans for scraps.

Here is the video that I made on Rottnest Island when we had coffee together at a shop near the beach.

I’ve known Seagulls from my youth when I lived six blocks from Lake Erie.  Here is a typical example.  Do you notice how the Australian variety differs from the USA variety?

Silver gulls are found in all states of Australia,^[4] as well as New Zealand and New Caledonia. It is a common species,

Silver gulls have twice been recorded in the United States; one bird was shot in August 1947 at the mouth of the Genesee River, Lake Ontario, and another was photographed in Salem County, New Jersey, in autumn 1996. Both are now believed to have escaped from captivity.^[6]

I notice some differences between the Lake Erie Seagull and the Australian variety.  For one thing, the Lake Erie Seagull is 40% larger than the Australian variety and has a black band near the front of its beak.  I would also say that the Australian Gull is more people-friendly than the Lake Erie Seagull.  I don’t remember being able to get so close to those gulls on the beaches of my youth.

Fifth Encounter

Sydney and Melbourne are located in the South-east.  Coral Bay is located on the Western coast, 4900 km. away from Sydney.  The distance from New York city to San Francisco is 4640 km.  Thus the whole of the USA can be tucked into the borders of Australia.  Meanwhile, the population of Australia is 35 million and this entire population is tucked into the coastal areas because the entire interior of Australia (“the outback”) consists of badlands and deserts with an annual rainfall of 20 to 40 cm.  The USA meanwhile has a population of 360 million (ten times that of Australia) that is largely tucked into coastal areas and the immense agricultural lands of the the Midwest.  Australia, accordingly, has to import wheat when their is a scarcity of rainfall and restrictions on the usage of water exist almost everywhere in Australia.

When we crossed the country to visit Coral Bay on the west coast, it was evident that water use was even more as issue here.  As we approached Coral Bay, we passed through areas with blackened stumps of trees (due to wild fires in the past).  We also found discovered peculiar mounds of dirt that looked like this:

So what is this?  Who made it?  What purpose does it serve?

When I first saw this, it reminded me of the mounds that existed in the badlands of India.  I asked our driver to stop so that I could explore one of these mounds.  When I approached the mound and touched it, I saw that it was composed of small pellets of dirt.  At that point, my driver was out of his car and screaming at the top of his lungs, “Stop.  Don’t  touch!”  When asked, he said, “That is a cobra den.   If you disturb it, you will surely be bitten.”

A cobra den?  I could not believe that my driver was correct.  Nonetheless, I took the route of caution and got back into the car.  At my hotel, I did a Google search and found the true story. . . .

Right across northern Australia are millions of termite mounds. They are everywhere, and each year thousands more spring up in all shapes and sizes – no council approvals, stamp duty or rigid building regulations up here. In fact, every mound is different, each one individually designed and built, and for the building teams there are no strikes, sickies or weekends. They simply work non-stop, seven days a week.

World-wide, there are around 2000 different species of termites, of which 350 are in Australia but only 20 of these are destructive.

Termites live in large social colonies comprising kings, queens, workers and soldiers. They are generally 8-12 mm in length, whitish or brown in colour, soft-bodied.  They avoid sunlight and build large mounds from the small balls of dirt that they remove from the tunnels and chambers constructed under the earth.
Termite mounds can be active for 100 years or more.  The mounds are built from soil, saliva and excreta, and this combination forms a very tough shell, as has been discovered by outback travellers who have crashed into one. Many vehicles have been totally written off after high-speed clashes with these formidable obstacles.

Want to learn more about the interior construction of these mounds and the social organization of termite societies?  Click here.

What best captures your fancy in our travels?  Tell me about it by leaving a note at the end of this page.  Or send me your reflections by email = FreeSpirit45202@yahoo.com

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#6 Encounters with wild Aussie animals

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