Sugar Glider

This is a juvenile sugar glider who was found on a tree being attacked by birds. She had several small wounds including one to her eye. The wounds and the eye are healing well and she is being cared for by one of our nurses.

Spotted Tree Monitor

This spotted tree monitor (a small species of goanna) was caught by a cat and has a deep puncture mark on its pelvic area. Cat bites, like most animal bites are very prone to develop serious infection. Often if they survive the physical bite they die later from infection. This little fellas wounds were flushed and cleaned and given antibiotics to give him a much better chance.

Baby Boobook owl

This is a juvenile southern boobook owl that came in with a broken wing. He should still be in the nest at this age.We are not sure what he was doing out or how he came to break his wing. His wing was quite smashed but we have managed to put it back together again. Time will tell if and how well he can fly on it.

Ibis

This is a juvenile straw necked Ibis who was hit by a car and broke both her wing and her leg. Both have required orthopaedic surgery to fix. (a metal pin has been inserted into both). She is recovering really well but will have to be in care for at least 12 weeks for the bones to heal before she can be released.

Magpie Geese

The Duck/Goose hunting season opened up here a week or so ago. The geese are not stupid and promptly leave the wetlands and rock up in and around town where its safer. For a small number of unfortunate geese this is swapping one danger for another. So we have seen a number of geese with "urban" injuries. (dog attacks, hit by cars, kids etc). This is a photo from one of our staffs backyard fence.

Baby Birds

Its an often repeated message to put baby birds back. All to often with baby birds they are unneccessary rescues. They are either a fledgling learning how to fly or they are a baby bird who has fallen from their nest. Either way their best chance of survival is back with their own real parents. If you find a nestling, look for its nest and try to place it back if possible. If the whole nest has fallen from the tree, like the one in the photo try to replace the nest into a nearby tree or shrub, at about head height. If the nest has fallen apart, try making a new one using a plastic container, like an ice cream container (with holes in the bottom to let rainwater drain out). The parents will almost always come back to look after them and it is their best chance of survival. The nest in the photo was returned to its tree (secured with a cable tie through the bottom) and its parents came back to feed it. The second egg hatched the next day. Hopefully they should do well now.

Red Ned's Parole.

RED Ned is a big male red kangeroo who has spent most of his life in Prison. However he has just been let out on parole.

Red Ned's mother was killed in a collision with a car over a year ago and he was picked up by a caring truck driver just north of Tennant Creek. He was found standing next to his dead mother. The truck driver drove with him north delivering him to us when he was very little. Unfortunately the accident had left significant injuries to Red Ned and he needed several operations. He has been cared for and rehabilitated at Berrimah Prison. Prisoners at the jail cared and fed him and he has become a firm favorite. He has recovered really well from all his operations and has used his jail time well to grow into a big healthy young man. Unfortunately he could not be released earlier due to all his injuries and Red kangeroos are not actually found anywhere near darwin. So by the time he was ready to be returned it was a monumental effort to get him back into the wild. He was flown back to Alice Springs where he will be soft released into the wild. Flying is expensive but thanks to several generous donors and berrimah prison who built a special travel cage.

Fire victims

It is pretty standard to have a lot of fires in the top end during the dry season. Usually these are of low intensity and cause little direct impact on wildlife, although flying around any fire are usually numerous birds of preys (mostly kites and crows) snapping up insects or any small animal trying to flee the fire. Black kites have even been observed picking up burning twigs and flying off with them to help spread the fire.

This dry season how ever we have seen several much higher intensity fires close to town which have resulted in wildlife casualties. (Still nothing like the scale recently seen in victoria).

This mother possum was brought to us by fire fighters. She was unfortunately unsavable since she had such severe burns. The only way we could help her was by putting her down. However shielded in her pouch was her baby. His mothers body had protected him from the flames and smoke and he escaped with only minor burns to his fingers. He is now being cared for and should be releasable in a few months time.

Burnt Possum

With the start of the dry season in the top end comes fires. There are fires everywhere. While on the whole the fires we have here are much much less severe than the ones they have down south wildlife will still get caught up in them and be injured. This is a little possum joey who lost him mum and burnt his feet trying to escape from the fire. Burns are nasty and can take a while to heal but his are fairly shallow so should heal. His fur is a little singed and he smells of burnt hair.

lawn Mower Frog

For those of you in Darwin might be have already heard about this one (it was in the NT news). We had a female green tree frog that got run over with a lawn mower.
The Lawn mower took the top layer of skin off and a fair amount of bruising. We anaethetised
her and stitched her up. She has recovered well and now looks great
and is ready for release.
Here is some photos of before during and immediately after the
surgery. And one photo of how she looks now.She has now been released back into the wild to hopefully live a long life.

Pygmy Goose

With the end of the wet the flood waters are disappearing rapidly. As a result many of the animals that depend on the water end up becoming more vulnerable to dogs cars and other threats. This is a green pygmy goose that was attacked by a dog. He has a large gash on his neck that we have stitched. While they are stressy birds we hope this one will make a full recovery. They tend to do better in groups so he has gone to a carers who has several others in care.

Pinky Bandicoot

This morning we had two pinky Northern Brown Bandicoots brought in. Their mother was chased by a dog. They were found scattered in some ones backyard. Two were unfortunately already dead but two are now being hand reared. You can see how small and undeveloped bandicoots are initially. A wallaby of this size would have virtually no chance of survival but bandicoots are tough and have a reasonable chance of survival.

Galah

This baby Galah's nest was accidentally destroyed when people cut down the palm trees they were living in. This Galah is the lucky one - its nestmate went through a wood chipper (and was killed) - when they found the body of that one they realised there were babies inside and this one was fortunately saved. This little fella will need to be hand reared for a few months before being able to be released.

Possum Blood Transfusion

A couple of days ago we had a very sick possum brought into us. His name is Malcolm and had been hand reared by Nina from Ninas ark. He had been gradually going down hill, been off colour. A blood test showed that he was extremely anaemic. In fact the test showed he needed a blood transfusion immediately or he would die. Now we have never done a blood transfusion on a possum before. We collected and cross matched some blood from a healthy adult donor possum and gave Malcolm some nice fresh blood. The effect was almost immediate - Malcolm went from being flat and hardly able to move to being very active and very hungry. He hasn't stopped eating since. The first photo is a before shot and you can see how sick he is. The second one is us giving Malcolm the blood and the last one is of Malcolm as he is today - full of life.

Sea Turtle

We've had another sea turtle brought in. She is another floater - a sea turtle who can't dive and bobs along the surface of the ocean. She is still in good condition and is responding very well to treatment, so we are very hopeful for her.

Black Footed Tree Rat

Most people don't realise that there are native rats and mice. In addition to a lots of small species of small marsupials (like dunnarts & antechinus) we also have a large number of true rats and mice. The best known are the water rat and hopping mice. In darwin we have many different species, but one of the most spectacular is the black footed tree rat. They are quite large - about double the size of a "normal" rat. We get quite a few each year usually after an altercation with a dog.

Wallaby reproduction

After the possum Birth, I thought share this photo of a wallaby teat. Marsupials are different in many ways to other mammals. One way is that in wallabies & kangeroos the joey only drinks from one nipple. When the joey first reaches the pouch it attaches to the teat and cannot be separated from it. As the joey grows so does the teat. As you can see in this photo it becomes quite long by the time the joey leaves the pouch. Next to it you can see the other three teats that are still quite small. At this stage they can have a second joey at the jelly bean stage attached to one of the small teats, with another one hopping along beside mum who drinks only from the longer one, jumping back into the pouch for the occasional feed. The teats return to the normal size when not in use. Amazingly the milk in each teat is different depending on the age of the joey drinking from it so that it ensure the right level of nutrition for the right joey. Even more amazingly they can even have a third joey in suspended animation inside the mothers womb at the same time.

Possum Birth

We all had the most amazing experience yesterday. We got to witness a baby possum being born. While there are possums being born all the time it's a once in a lifetime sort of thing to witness. They are born very embryonic - blind & the size of a jelly bean and crawl from the cloaca (at the bottom left hand corner of the photo) to the pouch (the darker patch near the top right corner). There they attach them selves to the teat inside the pouch. It was amazing!

Turtle release.

With the wet season coming to an end we are receiving a large number of injured freshwater turtles. Most of these moved out into temporary swamps during the wet and now they are drying up are getting trapped. When they go looking for more permanent water they often fall foul of dogs or cars. We got to release half a dozen of these yesterday into a permanent paperbark swamp. They were very happy and so were we. Releasing animals is the best part of our work.

Here are three Baby birds that have recently come into the clinic. All are just on fledging and would have been in most cases better off left alone. While they will be cared for a released shortly their best chance is always with their parents. They are a Pheasant coucal, a a white gaped honey eater and a Koel

Wedge tailed eagle

We have had another wedgie handed in. this one has a broken wing which we pinned today. He is quite small as far as wedgies go (the males and the tropical ones are smaller) and quite dark (wedgies get darker as they get older). He will go to the prison for care and rehabilitation shortly and from there be released.

Freshwater crocodile

This freshwater crocodile was found in someones driveway. Unfortunately it is missing its entire top jaw. We don't know what removed it, possibly a dog, a car or another croc. While crocs can and do survive with a substantial amount of their jaws missing - this one is missing too much and would not be able to eat so we had to euthanase it to prevent it from starving to death. Unfortunately not every story has a happy ending.

Yellow faced turtle

This little yellow faced turtle was brought to us after a dog chewed on her. She is missing the edges of her shell. they have been chewed off. While this may sound minor it is actually very serious as the shell is bone and a severe life threatening infection is likely.

Bandicoot

This is a juvenile brown bandicoot who was grabbed by a dog. He has a couple of wounds but should heal ok. Bandicoots are one the many species of animals much rarer now that cane toads have moved into the area. He will be released back into the wild in about 2 weeks. He is about half grown so is big enough to survive without his mum now.

Tata lizards

A few weeks ago we got a frantic call from a worker in a child care centre who had found "snake" eggs in the childrens sand pit. We carefully removed them (Primarily for the eggs safety - we knew they weren't snake eggs!) and placed them in an incubator. Today all three of them hatched. They are called tata lizards or northern water dragons. Since they are all fine and healthy and don't need parental care, we fed them full of crickets and released them back safely in to the wild.

Antilopine wallaroo

This little joey is a baby antilopine wallaroo. Her mother was hit by a car and died. She was in her mothers pouch at the time. The driver didn't stop but fortunately some one else did. She would have been a hard breaking site her standing next to her dead mum in the sun. She was quite dehydrated when she came to us and had damage to her hock (ankle) which needed surgery to fix. She is doing well now but will be in care for many months to come before she is old enough to return to the wild.

Turtle Caesarian

Today We performed a caesarian section on a Yellow faced turtle. One of the eggs had ruptured inside her causing a nasty peritonitis. Her only chance is surgery. We removed six remaining eggs, which we have some hope will hatch. We also needed to remove a whole lot of damaged tissue, including her uterus so she will not breed again because it was too badly damaged. In this photo I am intubating her so we can do the surgery.

Bent Blue tounge

This Bluey (northern Blue tounge lizard) isn't really wildlife. It was actually pick up by some one who kept it as a pet. Unfortunately they didn't know what they were doing and kept it inside in an old fish tank and fed it mince meat. It seemed to do well for a while but became bendy and stopped moving much. So they surrendered it to us. Unwhittingly they had given it metabolic bone disease. This happened because the glass in the tank filters out the ultraviolet light which is neccessary for calcium metabolism and there was no calcium in its diet anyway. So the bones became rubbery and fragile. On xray it had lots of breaks and its bones were paper thin. With proper care and lots of calcium and uv light it should recover but it will probably always have bent back.

Baby Torri

This baby Torres Straight pigeon (also called Pied imperial pigeon or Torresian imperial pigeon - or affectionately a "Torri") fell out of its nest after a storm. Unfortunately like most pigeons, torris make pretty frail nests. What we reccomend when this happens is to put him back in the nest if possible or if the nest is destroyed to make a new nest for the parents out of an old ice cream container with holes in the bottom (to let the rain water out) tied to the tree with cable ties where the old nest was. the parents almost always come back and look after their baby. Their best chance is always in the wild with their own parents. Unfortunately for this one it's finders weren't willing to give it back to its parents so it will now need to be handraised. It is definately an ugly ducking at this age but with time it will grow into a spectacular adult.

Kookaburra

This unfortunate blue winged Kookaburra got caught on a barbwired fence. He was soaked in his own blood. While he has lots of feather damage and some blood loss he should be ok and there doesn't seem to be any permanent damage.