Monday 7 October 2013

Animal Antics

We've had two strange events in our garden in the last 24 hours, both involving local wildlife.

As noted in an earlier post, Armidale has been hot and dry recently. Yesterday afternoon, I decided to fertilise our lawn and water it in to make the grass lush and green. Well I didn't expect either of the following scenes. The first shows a couple of crested pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes) having a bath under the garden sprinkler. Both husband and wife stayed there 5 minutes soaking up the moisture and spreading their wings presumably to wash their wing-pits just like I wash my arm-pits in the shower!


And when I got up this morning I went to feed our local assortment of crested pigeons, rainbow lorikeets, king parrots, eastern and crimson rosellas, and galahs ... among others.  We have 3 bird feeders and a constant stream of visitors. However, I didn't expect this guest! It is either a young eastern grey Kangaroo or a Wallaby. Either way, it was way off course. To my knowledge we've never previously had this form of wild-life here. The creature was very nervous and obviously frightened and took off we know not where. It presumably leapt a 1.3 m high fence into a neighbour's garden.


AS

1 comment:

Em said...

How exciting! I don't remember ever having a kangaroo or wallaby in the yard! You were lucky to get a picture of it.