Drama in the High Trees!

[Keith]

😱

Sitting there having a coffee this morning not really totally awake and heard a god awful commotion in the trees beyond my deck. It was war between a handful of birds and a Koala which is quite likely a regular event if you're a bear that frequents trees. What makes this remarkable is that it's the first time I've ever seen a Koala in any place I have ever lived in in the forty years I've been in Oz. In spite of the image you lot have of the place crawling with these sorts of critters it ain't true ... they are very shy and seldom seen by people in populated bush areas.

The pics aren't great because they were taken with my sh!tty little Canon A620 at full zoom and then cropped heavily ... this was all happening a fair distance away!

The sequence of events appears to be ... tree bear going about it's business gets discovered by birds. Birds obviously aren't keen on Koalas and make great merryment harrassing it from tree to tree, dive bombing it and attempting to knock it out of the branches. In the final shot you can see the Koala has well and truly had enough ... it disappeared shortly after.

It was quite a show! 😛

 

[mfogiel]

You should adopt this one Keith, aren't they fond of booze BTW? You could share a beer and keep him happy all day!

 

[Michael Markey]

Keith

I like the look on the bears face in the third one. Looks like he thought that he was going to have a quite start to the day like you. Any idea what type of birds they were. I`m a birdwatcher ! Good stuff. What did you use ?

Michael

 

[johannielscom]

*note to self: Must get A620 and have Keith teach me to use it*

Great shots Keith! What are those birds, they look like the magpies we have over here, cocky and noisy b*stards.

I love the one where the koala looks straight into the camera!

 

[mfunnell]

Keith - that's a nice sequence, and I think you're "sh!tty" little digicam has done a decent-enough job (though, as photographer, you probably had to work fairly hard around slow focus and shutter lag to get it there).

Your shots bring back memories, too. Unlike your experience of not seeing koalas, I recall living at Amberley (the RAAF base near Ipswich) way too many years ago, when the place was crawling (climbing?) with 'em. Every time there was a big wind or decent storm you'd be bound to get the less-than-delicate sound of a koala or two falling on the tin roof, rolling a bit then hitting the ground. (Defence housing, back then, wasn't quite up to today's standards or any real standard at all.)

I also recall that koala's are mean when they've fallen out of their tree (well, wouldn't you be?) and have awfully big claws. Our dog at the time was a very big girl and afraid of nothing and nobody - but she treated fallen koalas with a deal of caution.

...Mike

 

[mfunnell]

What are those birds, they look like the magpies we have over here, cocky and noisy b*stards.

It's a touch difficult to tell from the photos. It could be the Aussie magpie (unrelated, but similar to yours) - but I think its actually a currawong (related to Aussie magpies and ravens aka "crows").

...Mike

 

[Keith]

*note to self: Must get A620 and have Keith teach me to use it*

Great shots Keith! What are those birds, they look like the magpies we have over here, cocky and noisy b*stards.

I love the one where the koala looks straight into the camera!

Camera on 'P ...' a little exposure compensation for the backlight and press the shutter ... a little noise reduction and sharpening in post and a big crop! 😀

The bird is the eastern Currawong ... very noisy and quite aggressive to other birds.

The poor harrassed Koala definitely did have that "Why me?" look .. 😛

 

[Wayno]

Keith, I've heard that Koalas are very rare up in the mountains there for some reason - maybe the wrong species of gum trees? I never saw one when I lived there although a housemate spotted one once. The bird does look like a Currawong.

Mike, Ipswich is my hometown and I once saw a Koala fall out of a tree at my Dad's farm which is nearby. It wasn't windy, so I think he climbed on a rotten branch. The poor fella was pretty dazed for a minute before he scarpered back up a tree.

 

[Keith]

Keith, I've heard that Koalas are very rare up in the mountains there for some reason - maybe the wrong species of gum trees? I never saw one when I lived there although a housemate spotted one once. The bird does look like a Currawong.

Mike, Ipswich is my hometown and I once saw a Koala fall out of a tree at my Dad's farm which is nearby. It wasn't windy, so I think he climbed on a rotten branch. The poor fella was pretty dazed for a minute before he scarpered back up a tree.

I'm led to believe that fifty or so years ago they were plentiful up here but a succession of fairly major droughts has driven them from the area.

 

[mfunnell]

a succession of fairly major droughts has driven them from the area.

I'm not sure of your area, Keith, but one thing I did note many, many years ago when I went back to Amberley is that not only have they leveled all the old housing but also taken out all the old trees. It was a bit of a wasteland, so no wonder the poor old koalas weren't there.

(Well, when I went back there, the Officer Commanding's old house was considered fit to be a scout hall, but all other housing - and I'm talking senior officer housing back in the day - had been destroyed as unfit for human habitation. Oh how the world has changed!)

I can live with the cr*p old weatherboard houses having gone, but ripping out all the old-growth trees strikes me as wrong. I asked the question, at the time (as a newly-minted RAAFie, looking at his old home), but the Air Force had sold the property off to the local council.

Once the "evil military" no longer controlled things, all sorts of environmental values improved.

Like removing all the trees and koalas.

Nonetheless, valuable life-forms like "developers" seemed to thrive around the area.

...Mike

 

[mfunnell]

That's awesome. Ha!

And here I thought koalas and roos walked amongst the good folks of Oz... 😉

We see kangaroos in Pitt Street in Sydney in the same way you see deer on 42nd Street in your town. Koalas appear on Queen Street in Brisbane in the same way that brown bears often appear on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Then again (and I have seen them in inappropriate locations) I was once informed (by the LA Reader) that of the 10 most deadly snakes in the world, 9 come from Australia. 10 if you count Rupert Murdoch.

...Mike

 

[OurManInTangier]

On my recent travels around Oz, by huge camper van, most of the big wildlife I saw was roadkill. Kangaroos and wombats a plenty by the side of the roads but not one dained me fit to show itself to whilst alive. Though I did see plenty of saltwater crocs in rivers and estuaries around the Daintree rainforest area!

I even had the rare 'pleasure' of seeing a golden orb spider ( as big as my hand ) plucked from it's web by a bird early one morning. Apparently it had been in it's web outside my room for about six months before being breakfast for the bird.

For us Brits the wildlife in Oz is astonishing, the most terrifying thing we have is a Badger that may be slightly grumpy or an Adder snake that's bad at math.

Good series of pics Keith, shows why a crappy compact digi is always handy to have around

 

[OurManInTangier]

We see kangaroos in Pitt Street in Sydney in the same way you see deer on 42nd Street in your town.

...Mike

Bugger! I schlepped up and down Pitt St for five days, day and night, and only saw shoppers, office workers and partying groups...though maybe I'd had too many whiskeys in the Reuters bar up the road to notice the difference!

 

[Trius]

Now he says "I hate birds" rather than " I hate Qantas."

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Bears are amazing. My wife and I lived in Montana for four years and never saw one...and then we went back for a semester for a visiting teaching gig years later, and we were staying in a university apartment next to a golf course, and the same thing happened--eating breakfast, look out the window...uh...is that a...BEAR? Turned out to be a black bear cub up in a tree, and wildlife control guys had to come tranquilize it and let it go up on the mountain.

This was before I became the kind of guy who always had a camera lying around.

 

[mfunnell]

Bugger! I schlepped up and down Pitt St for five days, day and night, and only saw shoppers, office workers and partying groups...though maybe I'd had too many whiskeys in the Reuters bar up the road to notice the difference!

The Reuters bar (in the Brooklyn Hotel) - well, I wouldn't agree to knowing much about the place (being right next door to AAP, and all):


but (sorry) last I looked it was on George Street (and Grosvenor).

Perhaps that's why you missed this girl:

though somehow she doesn't seem the inner-city type.

...Mike

 

[OurManInTangier]

That helps explain why I got lost so often!! Maybe I'm used to the random nature of UK street layouts and not the far more logical grid systems of many Oz and US cities.

What's the AAP? I often went to the Reuters bar as it seemed to stay open later during the week once I'd finished working - I probably got that wrong too😀

 

[mfunnell]

What's the AAP?

Australian Associated Press. I'm sure you can take things from there...

...Mike

 

[OurManInTangier]

Yep. I was going to the wrong bar!