Post by templeton on Dec 16, 2014 16:36:24 GMT -5
On my last morning of early summer holidays on Kangaroo Island, 10 km off the coast of South australia, Oz's 3rd largest island. Went for a drive at dusk last night searching for Glossy Black Cockatoos, and driving around the hamlet of Penneshaw, was gobsmacked at the number of small potoroos and wallabies feeding on the verges of the roads. KI never got foxes and rabbits, so the extinctions in the 'critical weight range' mammals -0.5 to 5 kilogram never occured, although the minature KI emu went early on. Although I was heartened and joyful to see all these little guys, it was also poignaintly unsettling, a great sense of loss for that that I will never experience. I know the bush realy well, but evenings and nights on the mainland are usually silent, apart from the occasional possum or koala. But here the evening bush is full of movement, bush stone curlews calling, bouncing beasts moving through the scrub, quite different to my normal experience. And KI has a depauperate island fauna assemblage, always missing lots of stuff that we used to have on the big island. What the bush must have been like only a hundred years ago...
If anyone is over this way, certainly worth a visit- I've seen more dolphins, seals, sealions than in the rest of my life. And an amazing pace of island life, suprising only two hours or so from Adelaide. I'll be back -if only to see the Glossy Blacks...
T
If anyone is over this way, certainly worth a visit- I've seen more dolphins, seals, sealions than in the rest of my life. And an amazing pace of island life, suprising only two hours or so from Adelaide. I'll be back -if only to see the Glossy Blacks...
T
