A Photo a Day 44 - Critters

"Saturday's Critters" this week  is featuring some Australian critters. I hope you enjoy them.

We have frequent visitors from these furry fellows - the Australian Koala. Kenneth, pictured here, was a frequent visitor and used to visit every couple of weeks and stay for a few days, then wander off on his route. Check out more about Koalas on this link.

Koalas are very territorial, live alone and usually have a specific area that is their territory. Commonly thought to eat only a very limited variety of eucalypt trees, this has now been disproven. They prefer about 12 varieties, but will eat other eucalypts if their favourites are not available. They have been know to eat other species of native trees when hungry.

Kenneth spent so much time ine one of our trees, that the poor tree is in danger of dieing. This is very common because Koalas love the young new leaves and will move on to another tree when they have eaten the new growth.

Breeding season is from September until about January and during that time the koalas become more active and noisy, especially at night. In our experience it is the females who move around a lot while the males sit in their trees and make the most horrific growling, grunting noises to attract them.  It seems to work because we get visits from the ladies, often still with the baby from the previous year on board.

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Sadly, although we have had mother and baby visit, we haven't seen Kenneth since last August.


Liz Needle  -  linking with "Saturday Critters" and "Camera Critters".