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| Wallaroos (Hill Kangaroo) Male and female |
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| Wallaroo - male |
As you may have guessed from the picture accompanying this
column, I am writing this from Australia where I suspect it is a bit warmer
than it is in Pett right now. In
Australia, my daughter-in-law puts out seeds for the birds just like we do in
the UK, but the range of species that are attracted to the garden are very
different. In the UK we expect to see
bluetits, great tits, goldfinches, etc., in other words the commonplace
birds. In Australia we get the
commonplace birds as well, but commonplace in Australia means sulphur-crested
cockatoo, king parrot and rainbow lorikeets.
The feeders are different as well – parrots’ beaks would make short work
of our plastic and metal feeders, so in Australia they use small metal dishes
firmly screwed to the balcony rails. It
is, of course, the commonplace that defines the country or region. There are exotic rarities here, just as there
are in the UK, it’s just that they are different rarities, but to get the
character of a place you need to concentrate on the everyday common
species. When William Smith compiled his
geological map of Britain in 1815, one of the clues he used to determine the
underlying rock types was the type of common plants growing above, because
plants are determined by the soil type and the soil type is determined by the
rocks beneath. Common plants are common
because they are successful, and they are successful because they suit that
particular ecological niche, in this case, the soil.
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| Sulphur-crested Cockatoo |
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| ..and a bit closer |
Another difference in the birds here is that they are
nowhere near as nervous as our UK birds.
I can sit on the balcony typing this with a sulphur-crested cockatoo
literally within reach. This allows me
to study them easily and the most striking thing about the cockatoo (apart from
its showy crest) is its feet. It has
quite short legs and walks with its ‘heel’ on the ground. (Birds don’t really have heels. The joint equivalent to our ankle is normally
halfway up the bird’s leg which is why flamingos look as though they have got
their knees on back to front.) This
gives them a curious waddling gait but also a stable platform when stood on one
leg. Give a cockatoo a piece of bread
and it will hold it in one claw and take bites just as we would eat a
sandwich. Also, when the bird has taken
a large seed or a nut it will wrap its claw round the end of its beak so that
nothing escapes when the seed cracks open.
For such a big bird (they are about the same size as a buzzard!) this
gives them a certain gentleness that you wouldn’t imagine from hearing their
almost deafening raucous calls.
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| King Parrot Male |
I visited the Australia Botanical Gardens yesterday and
despite the rain, I managed to get some photos of wallaroos that live in the gardens.
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| King Parrot (female) - Queen? |
(The gardens cover 416 hectares which is over
a thousand acres so there are plenty of wild areas for them.)
This involved wading through some long grass
to get close enough to the wallaroos.
When I got home, I noticed that my socks had sprouted long wiry hairs
and something was pricking my ankles.
On
investigation they turned out to be grass seeds, but pulling on the wiry
bristle didn’t work, I had to push the seeds through the sock to get them out.
This was because at the base of each seed
there was a number of stiff backward pointing spikes that acted like
barbs.
I assume that this was an
adaptation whereby the seeds, which presumably evolved before socks did, worked
deeper into the fur of animals so that they were dispersed further.
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| Rainbow lorikeet - I wonder why it's called that? |
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| ...and still closer - admiring its reflection in the lens |
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| Spiky grass seeds - I will try and identify the plant next time. |
