Diane’s Blog and Blurbs: #45 - Koalas, Roos, Dingos, and the Penguin Parade

Couldn’t leave Australia without seeing some koalas, kangaroos, and other critters who call this continent home. We saw several wallabies in the wild including a few with their joeys out in the fields. They look a lot like kangaroos but are usually a bit smaller and stockier. But boy can they hop! Well known marsupials include kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, possums, wombats, and Tasmanian Devils.

The best close up views of all these animals were in a park and you could tell from their lethargy around people that they were very used to being gawked at all day. But it’s the only way we could get a few good photos and we did get to interact and feed some of them.

Kangaroos have a very short gestation period, usually around 4-5 weeks and the joey is born in an essentially fetal state. The miniature newborn is blind, furless, and the size of a jelly bean. It crawls across its mother’s fur and makes its way up into the pouch where it latches onto a nipple for sustinence. It will stay there for several months, during which time it develops fully. Then it begins to venture a bit from the pouch, feeding and learning survival skills. Until it is ready to go out completely on its own, the joey returns to the pouch to sleep, and will seek refuge there if it senses danger. Joeys stay in the pouch for up to a year in some species, or until the next joey is born.

Contrast this with the giraffe who is born after 14 months of gestation, is already 6 feel tall, weighs 100 or more pounds, and walks on its own after an hour or so of being born. I continue to marvel at all the different species of animals and how nature provides each with exactly what they need to survive and flourish.

The kanagaroos in the park were very docile and took food (park approved) right out of our hands. In one of the pictures you can see a joey in the pouch.

Look closely to see the joey in the pouch with the front and hind legs hanging ou

The emus not only took the food out of my hand, they took the entire plastic container I was holding. Afraid they might choke on the plastic I reported this immediately to a park employee who just gave me a knowing smile as if to say, “Yeah, they’re aggressive buggers, aren’t they?”

I think this was my first time to see a dingo. If you watched Seinfeld, you’ll remember Elaine saying “The dingo ate your baby”. If you didn’t watch Seinfeld you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about!! The dingo is a canine that is native to Australia. They have very keen vision and can turn their heads to almost 180 degrees in each direction. From this photo, I’d say they also have very sharp teeth!

Dingo

But the animal that really stole the show was the koala - just too adorable for words. They sleep about 18 hours a day and when not snoozing, they are munching away on eucalyptus leaves. Many years ago I was able to hold a koala and it threw it’s arms around my neck and snuggled right into me. It didn’t want to let go and neither did I! Would have loved to take it home but Customs officials would have had something to say about that. And besides, I didn’t have any eucalyptus trees in my back yard.

After our time at the Park, we continued farther onto Phillip Island for the most amazing part of the day. Just before sunset we went to watch the world’s smallest penguins in their natural habitat returning ashore after a day of fishing at sea.

In an earlier blog I wrote about the opportunity we had to see the little white flippered penguins at Pohatu, and our amazing timing to see the release of one rehabilitated chick back into the sea. Those penguins were few in numbers, and found only around Canterbury, New Zealand. But they are very closely related to these penguins in Australia.

Tonight we witnessed a march of thousands of Little Penguins (formerly called Fairy Penguins) as they returned from the sea, waddled up onto the beach, and proceeded to march toward their nests in the sand dunes and hills. We stood in a bunker underground which had windows at our eye level. Just outside these windows was the path along which the penguins marched by. So they were just a foot or two away from us and what a view it was!

About 13 inches tall, their heads and upper bodies are blue with slate-grey ear coverts fading to white underneath, from the chin to the belly. Their flippers are blue and their feet are pink above with black soles and webbing. Hundreds of them walked right by us, some walking slowly, others skipping along, while still others dragged along making us wonder if they’d make it.

What’s amazing is that they do this every evening and know exactly what path to take back to their nests. To us, the thousands of nests on the hillside all looked the same. Yet, using their sense of sight almost exclusively, they find their way back every day.

Photography of any kind was prohibited, so I don’t have any pictures to share. But I’ll include a couple from the Internet, so you can see how cute they are!