Long Search for Wombat Joey

It took eight weeks to find Rossco the wombat joey after his mother was shot and then hit by a car near Tantawangalo.

Heather Brown a Bombala-based volunteer with LAOKO (Looking After Our Kosciusko Orphans) found the dead mother and saw that she had an elongated teat which showed she had been feeding a joey.

She and others searched in swampy, mosquito ridden conditions for weeks, night and day, with the help of wildlife cameras which helped them narrow the search.

Since being found, underweight and dehydrated, he has grown from 5kg to over 14kg and the wounds on his back, probably from other wombats, have healed. When he gets to 18kg he will be soft-released.

Ref: Adrian Reardon and Simon Lauder, Marathon search to find wombat joey a show of volunteers' dedication to survival of species, ABC News, 4 September 2022.

Golden-Tipped Bats

Golden-tipped bats hunt orb-weaving spiders in the forest understory at night. During the day they sleep in nests of rainforest birds by tunnelling into the bottom of the nests.

The 6g bats with woolly golden fur that matches the moss of their nests are found in the moist vegetation along gully lines of eucalypt forests on Australia’s east coast.

These areas are not usually prone to bush fires and so the bats and birds that live there are not adapted to cope with them. Not surprisingly, after the Black Summer bushfires of 2019/20, the areas that were burnt have few of these bats and none of the bird nests they rely on. Researchers have tried placing mop-heads as temporary roosts for the bats but they have not been used.

Ref: Christopher Turbill and Brad Law, This spider-eating, nest-sharing bat was once safe from fire – until the Black Summer burnt its rainforests, The Conversation, 31 August 2022.

Underpasses Help Wildlife

Australia’s expanding road network not only increases wildlife roadkill but also impedes wildlife movement and fragments habitats.

Researchers at Southern Cross University have found that underpasses are widely used by wildlife. Using wildlife cameras they monitored 12 underpasses for two years in the north-east of NSW and found over 4,800 medium-large mammals (including kangaroos and wallabies and even koalas) and goannas used them as well as small animals like snakes and rodents.

At the same time wildlife roadkill seemed to be reduced as the roads are fenced where there are underpasses. However the researchers warn:

"Underpasses are not a panacea for impacts on wildlife. And we shouldn’t use their effectiveness as a justification to run highways through pristine areas. They’re a tool to minimise impacts of road projects that have wide community support."

Ref: Ross Goldingay, Good news: highway underpasses for wildlife actually work, The Conversation, 1 August 2022.

Killer Kangaroos?

Last month a 77-year old man was killed by a 3 year old western grey kangaroo that he had hand-reared. Police had to kill the kangaroo because he was preventing an ambulance crew from getting to the injured man.

This is only the second time that a kangaroo has caused a human death in 100 years. However it does highlight the dangers of getting too close to adult male kangaroos.

I, myself (Sharon), have had my face badly scratched by a 3 year old eastern grey kangaroo I had reared (Petrie). He was just play-fighting but got a bit carried away.

Some people advise that if you are attacked by a kangaroo to crouch down so as not to present a threat. However I have also been attacked from behind by a large male adult kangaroo when I was bending over to feed pellets to a young female kangaroo I had hand-reared (Nellie).

Ref: Narelle Towie, ‘They will get you in a headlock’: Australians warned off pet kangaroos after second death in 100 years, The Guardian, 18 September 2022.

Suspected Flying Fox Poisoning

Earlier this year 70 grey-headed flying-foxes were found dead in the Shoalhaven area. One of them was found to have the banned pesticide Dieldrin in its body.

"At this stage we have not been able to identify any person responsible and we do not know if this was a deliberate or accidental poisoning," Mike Saxon from the Department of Planning and Environment said. "We are continuing enquiries but regardless, this tragic incident highlights the horrible impact banned pesticides have on our native wildlife."

It is important to secure household chemicals and pesticides securely and old stocks of organochlorine pesticides like Dieldrin can be taken to a Household Chemical Cleanup event.

Ref: Suspected poisoning of Shoalhaven flying-foxes, NSW Department of Planning and Environment, 25 August 2022.

Meat-eating Lorikeets?

A farmer on a property at Elimbah, north of Brisbane had been feeding chicken mince to wild birds for more than a decade when he noticed that rainbow lorikeets were eating the meat. Shortly afterwards scaly-breasted lorikeets began eating the meat and then cockatoos. These birds are herbivores, normally eating nectar and pollen.

Griffith University's Professor Darryl Jones was astonished by this and intended to conduct a study into it. "Suddenly they're switching from a plant-based diet to a meat-based diet," he said. "That could have all kinds of implications for birds' health and physiology.”

Professor Jones would like to find out if this meat-eating is unnatural and whether it is harmful and people need to be told not to feed them meat. (I can find no evidence that the study went ahead - SB.)

More recently "a pack of brush turkeys has been filmed in Sydney’s Northern Beaches ravenously devouring the carcass of a bandicoot". Brush turkeys normally eat seeds, worms and grubs so this is unheard of. Jones says the birds are simply adapting their diet to take advantage of abundant roadkill in the suburbs.

Ref: Matt Watson, World-first study into meat-eating rainbow lorikeets finds more herbivorous birds changing diets, ABC News, 13 Sept 2015.

Artificial Light at Night

Millions of birds are injured or killed each year because they are disoriented by bright urban lights. Bats and small animals that avoid lights have their habitats reduced by these lights.

"At its core, artificial light at night (such as from street lights) masks natural light cycles. Its presence blurs the transition from day to night and can dampen the natural cycle of the Moon. Increasingly, we are realising this has dramatic physiological and behavioural consequences, including altering hormones associated with day-night cycles of some species and their seasonal reproduction, and changing the timing of daily activities such as sleeping, foraging or mating.”

Mitigation strategies include using amber lights and turning them off during sensitive periods as happens on Philip Island, Victoria, where the lights are turned off along known seawater migration pathways during fledging season.

House owners can help by minimising outside lighting, using low-intensity amber, red or orange lights, and keeping lights low to the ground, shielded at the rear and pointed downward.

Ref: Theresa Jones and Kathryn McNamara, Artificial light at night can change the behaviour of all animals, not just humans, The Conversation, 28 July 2022.

What I learned from…

by Heidi Horvath

What I learnt from wildlife sitting at Zora Brown’s place:

• Wombats love their milk and shut their eyes in bliss when they have their bottles. They have different personalities and idiosyncrasies; one was very boisterous while the other was quite shy.
• Wallabies are not as trusting of strangers as wombats. It takes time to gain their trust but they seemed to like my singing!
• Swans are amazing birds up close but they are very messy! Swans eat huge amounts of lettuce which was challenging during a national lettuce shortage.
• It helps to have a partner to assist, especially with big jobs such as cleaning out the swan pond.

Caring for wildlife is an enormous commitment and I have so much more appreciation and understanding of what is involved and how truly amazing our WIRES carers are. I found the experience deeply satisfying and I have developed more confidence and skills in caring for our precious wildlife. Thank you Zora!