Birds and other things (no flowers!)

8 comments

Something Marguerite wrote the other day about Australian native wildlife set me thinking. In Oz they can be fined for feeding the wild animals and birds, although in some tourist places you can feed them for a half an hour or so a day, with purchased food. My granddaughters were not too sure about having parrots on their heads!
Completely the opposite of here, where the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds say you should feed the wild birds winter and summer alike. It goes without saying that I inadvertently feed a squirrel or two (how can I stop them?). This need has arisen because of man’s affect on their habitat, leaving them short of natural sources of food, nest sites, etc.
I guess because Australia is so vast, if man gets in their way too much, they just move on. Rosellas, King Parrots, Rainbow Lorikeets, Sulfur Crested Cockatoos, Galahs, etc, etc, didn’t look particularly endangered to me!
One place we stayed, they had signs up warning you not to feed the birds till after 8am. At 7.45 my hubby took his bowl of meusli out to sit on a picnic table, and the next thing I heard was GerrOFF!"
King Parrot (male)

Satin Bower bird

When I looked out of the cabin to see what the fuss was about, he had a couple of Rosellas on his head, and about 4 King Parrots in his meusli bowl, and a Satin Bower bird was queueing up to get a go! Nobody had told the birds Bower bird’s nest, decorated with his “treasures”

Unsuccessful retreat to the cabin.

In some built up areas, though, the koala’s lifestyle is threatened, because they have been left in islands of eucalyptus forest, with no means of moving on to the next area, because of man’s all round encroachment. They are trying to re-establish “koala corridors” of eucalyptus so they can.
Australian Ringtail possum
I do have to confess to feeding a possum one night. The only vegetarian thing we had was tomato slices, covered in butter, heading for the barbie. It sat in the tree above the barbeque, took the slice from me, ate it , then delicately licked the butter off its paws. I was entranced.
My son has one resident in the roof space of his Queenslander home in Brisbane, and possum is a dirty word in his house – it has resisted all attempts to move it out, and even if you do succeed, you have to let it go in its own territory, because they don’t survive relocation (or is that a myth?).
Makes my problem with mice in the loft pale into insignificance. I have just installed an electronic rodent scarer – watch this space!

• 27 Oct, 2008
• 9 likes

More blog posts by Shirleypoppy