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Published: November 16th 2011
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female Australian darter (Anhinga novaehollandiae)
on the Swan River, just by where the ferry leaves across to the zoo My plane from KL touched down in Perth at the entirely reasonable hour of 5.10am. This was my first time in Western Australia and I was looking forward to seeing a lot of new birds and mammals. I was staying at my brother's place so I didn't need to worry about accommodation, but of my two weeks in WA I would only be in Perth for a few days. First stop was the zoo. They had several species there I was looking forward to seeing before heading out into the bush, namely numbat, quokka, Western swamp turtle, spotted hyaena and slow loris. The first two I was hoping to find in the wild as well, but at least here I could be sure of photographic opportunities. I was very impressed with the zoo; I'd rank it amongst the best in Australasia, probably higher than Taronga and Melbourne. It is broadly divided into three sections: Australia, rainforest and Africa. The whole Wetlands area in the Australian section was unfortunately closed for renovations. While I didn't mind missing out on the little blue penguins and pelicans, it did mean I was also missing the frogs and the Western swamp turtle. In the Australian
male Australian darter (Anhinga novaehollandiae)
on the Swan River, just by where the ferry leaves across to the zoo walkabout I found my way to the quokkas which were all hiding, then to the numbat enclosure. The numbat was also hiding. This wasn't going so well. The spotted hyaenas were also a no-show. At least the slow loris came to the party. The nocturnal house at Perth Zoo is absolutely fantastic, worth going to the zoo for this house alone in my opinion. The slow loris was wide awake (unlike every other slow loris I've ever seen) and tearing around his cage at what I would describe as a fast walk if he were a human. Imagine if you think you're going to miss your bus but you don't want to run for it, so you just walk extra speedily -- that's what the slow loris was like, totally belying his common name. Other interesting species in here were red-tailed and brush-tailed phascogales, woylie, dibbler (!!!), western quoll, ghost bat, bilby, the amazingly-bizarre Australian owlet-nightjar....the list just goes on and on. Possibly the best nocturnal house in Australia (although Taronga's does have that long-beaked echidna.....).
Another animal at the zoo that I was supposed to be looking out for, but forgot to, was the five-lined palm squirrel from
India. These aren't in cages, they are wild in Perth. They were released by the zoo back in 1898 and have been living and breeding in the area ever since. The zoo released kookaburras at the same time and they were even more successful -- all the kookaburras all over Western Australia descend from the zoo's releases. The rainbow lorikeets all over Perth are also introductions from the east, but this time by the University of Western Australia; now they are considered a pest and a possible threat to the native purple-crowned lorikeet. Anyway, I completely forgot to look out for squirrels and instead caught a bus over to Lake Monger to look for ducks. Lake Monger is a small roundish lake surrounded by lawns which are popular with cyclists and dog-walkers. The lake itself is popular with ducks and also the oblong snakeneck turtle which is endemic to WA. Most of the waterfowl found in WA occur around Lake Monger and I saw most of them quite easily. There were a couple missing but I'll find them some other time. There are also great crested grebes on the lake which was nice.
The next day I had been
planning on going to Lake Herdsman, just by Lake Monger, because its better for birds, but I had been reminded about the squirrels and also been told that there were bottlenose dolphins living in the Swan River which flows through Perth. These are IndoPacific bottlenose dolphins, smaller than regular bottlenoses (about six foot or so), and more of an inshore species. Apparently they are common in the river and easily found. Sounded good to me. I borrowed my brother's bike and went searching. First stop was a golf course just along the road from the zoo where the palm squirrels are regularly seen. There were none. I went to the river and cycled along it for a few hours where the dolphins are regularly seen. There were none. Feeling like the King Of Fail, I drowned my sorrows in birds at King's Park, a big expanse of bushland in the heart of Perth. This is a great place. I even managed to find western gerygone, which was good because this little bird is a common western endemic and if I'd failed to find it, well, that would have been truly tragic. Feeling better, I returned to the river and cycled
along its banks to Pelican Point. There's a viewing platform here overlooking a small lagoon reputed to be good for watching waders. Not so good now though because trees have grown up between the platform and the lagoon making the water all but invisible. There's a scout building or something like that next to it though from which the river can be watched (although the lagoon is still mostly hidden). An osprey flew past and a couple of pied stilts foraged in the shallows. There was something on the far side of the river and when I checked it out through the binoculars I realised it was a dolphin. I couldn't see much because it was so distant and it was really just a dorsal fin appearing and disappearing, but it was still a dolphin. Keeping my binoculars trained on the far side of the river, I was musing on whether I should count this as a sighting. I mean, I knew it was an IndoPacific bottlenose because it couldn't be anything else but at the same time I couldn't really see much. Suddenly there was a splashing in the water right in front of me and I took my
eyes from the binoculars to see a dolphin literally ten feet away, right at the beach! Now that one counts! The dolphins here do tend to hunt right along the shore in very shallow water, but they move fast and continuously. I grabbed the bike and took off after it, basically following it all the way along the river. Sometimes there was one dolphin, sometimes a whole group, but I never managed to get any good photos because they were just too fast and unpredictable with their surfacing. Brilliant afternoon though, and later when checking my photos I realised that what I had thought was a little plastic ball or something similar which the dolphin was playing with was actually a small pufferfish, blown up into a globe, being used as a throw-toy. Before calling it a day I returned to the golf course by the zoo and, what do you know, I found two palm squirrels in a bottlebrush tree. Two new mammals in one day is always good, especially if I haven't even left the city.
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