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.