Supporting cast: Miniature Schnauzer Dog and Owners
Action: Curlew repeatedly confronts the Mini Schnauzer, screaming and batting its fully-spread wings. The Dog owners think this is mildly amusing. The Schnauzer is one minute brave, the next hesitant. The Bird follows the Schnauzer in a threatening manner, for around 3 minutes, before someone approaches:
Enter a uniformed bus driver heading home after finishing work:
“Leave the bird alone!”
“We are not touching the bird.”
“Step away from the Bird.”
“Listen, the Bird was the one attacking our dog.”
“Step away from the Bird!“
“We are not touching the bird.”
“I said leave the bird ALONE.”
Both creatures survived the encounter.
Curlew Conversation
“They have nasty claws.”
“Are you speaking from experience?“
“Yes, we used to put on hard hats to move around our workplace and run like hell, so the Curlews wouldn’t get us. They really hurt. They had a nest in our work compound that we had to pass to get anywhere.”
“It was just them just being super-protective, which is understandable. It was unfortunate that they decided to put their nest in the middle of our workplace.”
“I think Plovers are a bit the same?“
“But they screech…not mourn like the Curlews.”
“Given that they were just protecting their nest I understand their behaviour.”
A key reason why friendships with magpies are possible is that we now know that magpies are able to recognize and remember individual human faces for many years. They can learn which nearby humans do not constitute a risk. They will remember someone who was good to them; equally, they remember negative encounters.
Sometimes Australian Magpies will swoop on someone as in this video clip and tragically can cause injuries:
Why Do Magpies Swoop?
Only 12% of male magpies are aggressive. During nesting season, the male magpie is simply doing his job defending its eggs and chicks, which are in the nest for about six to eight weeks between July and November in Australia.
Female magpies don’t swoop at all. Magpies swooping usually stops once the young birds have fledged and left the nest.
Having said that, if you get to know your local magpies, they probably won’t swoop you at all, as they recognize that you aren’t a threat to their nest.
Since moving to the Home by the Sea, I have had a Magpie family who nests near our house. Our street is their territory.
They frequently pop in with their young ones to check to see if I have some titbits for them. One of the elder birds often swoops in to reprimand the young ones for socialising with me. His actions are most likely altruistic. He prefers the kids to be independent and find worms for themselves rather than become dependent on human handouts. Who can blame him? Such a sensible chap!
Should I be feeding them at all? If so what?
Might it encourage them to swoop in nesting season?
I decided to find out.
The website- Magpie Alert – comes complete with an interactive map for cyclists to beware of popular swooping sites.
Unfortunately, that was stretching the friendship a tad too far even for a bird-lover like me, so I had to ghost him/her for a while. We became friends again, but the addition of a lively puppy to the house meant this clever magpie now has a hunting dog to contend with and wisely he and his family now only greet me in the front yard – somewhere the Schnauzer has no access to.
What Can You Feed Magpies?
Lifehacker.com.au recommends feeding Magpies natural alternatives if you want to make friends with your local Magpies. This is much better for their tummies than chunks of bread or processed meat.
Rummage around in your garden; dig up some worms, turn over rocks, bricks, firewood logs, strip bark from trees, and you most likely will find some tasty tucker for the magpies.
The Magpieaholic warns us not to feed Magpies raw meat, cheese and bread and exotic animal vet, Deborah Monks said raw meat and mince, although popular, did the most damage to magpie health.
What does it mean when a Magpie visits you?
Magpies are highly intelligent and can make interesting pets.
Animal Expert Dr Kaplan claims that once a magpie gets to know you and judges you to be a nice person, you will have earned a friend for life. “They will form very long friendships, like dogs,” she said. “They will introduce their young, [to you] and they will be the most charming birds. My Magpie Mate certainly confirmed this theory. She returns with his young introducing me to them every year.
Magpies have excellent memories. They can remember a face for up to five years.
Deterring Magpies. How to Scare Magpies?
I’d rather make friends with them but if you have a rogue, aggressive Magpie that terrorises you, it is possible to use something shiny or metallic to scare them away.
Hang CDs, metallic balloons, aluminium pie pans, and/or half-full plastic bottles 3 feet above the grass near any plants that the magpies are disturbing.
How do Magpies Communicate?
Magpies sing to reinforce their claim on their territory, mostly at dawn and dusk. But while we are all familiar with the magpie’s melodious carolling, we are perhaps less familiar with their other calls. Magpies use many different calls, including grunting noises, to communicate. www.environment.sa.gov.au
Above all, they are considered a positive omen of good luck and are known as “birds of joy.”
“So I woke up and my beautiful Schnauzer pup is laying on the back patio covered in dirt with a rabbit in his mouth. The rabbit’s not bloody, just dirty. My neighbor’s kids raise blue ribbon rabbits. I instantly knew it was one of theirs. 😢
I took the rabbit away from my dog, rushed inside, and brushed all the dirt off it before my neighbors could come home. It was stiff but I heard some animals play dead when they are afraid, but I couldn’t remember which ones.
I quickly took it and placed it back in one of the cages in their back yard then I ZOOMED back home. (Don’t judge me 😒)
Not 30 minutes later, I heard my neighbour screaming like she’s seen a ghost, so I go out and innocently ask them what’s wrong?
They tell me their rabbit died three days ago and they buried it, but now it’s back in the cage.” 😳
April Fools!
Found on social media, this was not my story. It just might be a work of fiction, or an old joke, but I wouldn’t put it past a Schnauzer to go after a rabbit!
Apparently this very thing DID happen with another Schnauzer, their owner and a guinea pig. I am giving this author, (Kathy W.), the benefit of the doubt, but it is April Fools Day, isn’t it?
Not many folks have pet rabbits in Australia. Keeping them is illegal and there are fines unless you have a special permit. Without a natural predator to control numbers, introduced Rabbits decimated Australia’s bush in the early 20th century reaching plague proportions and thus were banned.
It is legal to keep the following variety, and give them to your Schnauzer!
I never thought I’d be confirming an urban myth – that kangaroos hop down Australian streets.
Australia’s a first world country, (with a few exceptions), with over 22 million occupants, clustered in a few sprawling metropolises hugging the east coast. Noone still believes kangaroos hop along our city streets, do they?
It seems I was wrong.
Walking the dog around our new Home by the Sea, yesterday, I wasn’t quick enough to snag a photo of the Eastern Grey Male Kangaroo hopping down this street between the rows of newly built homes.
(I did get a video of the sweet creature, as you will see below).
What he hoped to find to eat along the street, I wasn’t sure. Kangaroos eat a range of grasses, herbs and shrubs. Perhaps Mrs Baldry’s lavender was to his liking?
The roo was headed in the wrong direction for grass, so I tried to shoo it back towards the Eco Corridor and wetland areas to the west and away from the traffic as you will see in the following video.
Eco corridor
(Hopefully the embedded video works. Let me know if you can’t see it or it says unsupported which can happen on mobile phones).
Kangaroo in the Suburbs
We all know that rain can make the grass grow, while you are watching it. During rains, the water that runs off from the road surface collects in the verges along the edge of the streets and roads, resulting in a flush of lush, green grassy growth. Grass that many Australian herbivorous animals enjoy eating. Especially Kangaroos, wallabies and wombats.
I think you can guess what happens when they feed on these verges, after rain. Roadkill stats rise, not just in the wake of floodwaters ravaging their habitat, but also the lush growth that entices the animals out towards the roadside verges to feed.
Then this happened on my way home yesterday. Apologies for the poor quality of the dashcam footage.
Sliding Kangaroos on a Wet Road
Drunken Kangaroos
There might just be another explanation for the sliding kangaroos, which from my perspective appear unhurt by the incident and hop away okay.
As I discovered, reading an ABC article, kangaroos can become slightly drunk or disorientated on eating too much lush new grass, (which we have plenty of at the moment), and especially so, if a particular form of pasture grass has been consumed.
This can be known as Philaris poisioning syndrome, making kangaroos disoriented, clumsy and loose balance. Which is fairly critical when jumping if you are a roo!
Michelle Mead, from Central Victoria’s Wildlife Rescue and Information Network, said the ailing kangaroos resembled someone who was under the influence of alcohol. The wildlife worker said the animals were indeed intoxicated and that it was likely a type of grass that was to blame. Known as phalaris or bulbous-canary grass, the introduced plant species is a common pasture crop grown to feed livestock.
The syndrome was more common in areas with limestone soils, which contained less cobalt than basalt soils, Dr Rendell said. Dr Rendell said Phalaris staggers were also more common when lush grass growth occurred, because animals digested less soil, and therefore less cobalt, in those areas.
Kangaroos have all kinds of fascinating physical adaptations for existing in dry country, including suspending pregnancies and foetal growth in drier weather, inducing them to coincide with the grass growth after rainfall, as well as methods for keeping themselves cool in intense heat.
They are not usually active in the middle of the day, conserving their energy. Seeing them jump around at 1pm on some idle Tuesday was unsual.
Many people claim their animals understand them: both the words they speak to their dogs and their meaning. It is claimed that Schnauzer Dogs are so intelligent, they may have a vocabulary of over 50 words!
However softly I say to the Moth, “Shall we go for a walk now?” – the Schnauzers will hear this and come running from the furthest reaches of the house, signalling their excitement and concurrence, with short high-pitched barks of excitement, the older one ballerina dancing on her hind legs then executing a quick Downward Dog Stretch any Yoga teacher would be proud of, as if to say – “I am ready to go too!”
The Schnauzer is Emotionally close to its Owners
Not only would I propose my Schnauzer is in synch with my body’s biorhythms, but the Schnauzers have extraordinary hearing.
Even though her doggie bed is located in the neighbouring room, she hears when I roll over in bed to wake up, even before I have opened my eyes! I have said nothing, done nothing and she hears all!
How does she know I am awake?
She hears me inhale a deep breath as I begin to wake up!
The Miniature Schnauzer
As soon as I take that breath, I hear scratching at her door a millisecond later! This dog is linked so closely to me she knows that I am awake and scratches at the door telling me she wants to come and say ‘Good Morning. Of course, it must be time for her Breakfast.
They KNOW Every move you MAKE, every Breath you take…you know the rest…
Schnauzers are renowned for being food-obsessed and I see no evidence to dispute that claim.
Standard Schnauzer’s Instinctive Intelligence
The Standard Schnauzer may have the highest instinctive intelligence out of the three [sizes of Schnauzer]. That’s because they were bred for many things, making them some of the most versatile working dogs you can find! They really did it all.
There is no doubt pets bring a special element to your life, but a schnauzer, is so human-like, it even regards itself as human.
I had a Standard Schnauzer some years back. That Dog could tell the time.
When I was working on the desktop computer, writing a post on my blog, and the clock passed 4.59 pm, she would enter the study, put her head underneath my arm, (which was invariably positioned on the computer’s mouse), and flick my hand off the computer mouse, with her powerful neck muscles.
She was letting me know it was time to start arranging or cooking dinner for the evening. Until I cooked my own dinner, she would not get hers, so there was a definite incentive for her to assist in this timely reminder!
Smart!
A Schnauzer Working from Home
In the early years, she would be in the habit to get up from her slumber and come and tell me it was 2.40 pm which meant it was time to down tools and go and pick the kids up from school. Without fail!
What is it about pets that can turn the most unemotional, stoically, clinical person into a blubbering, child-like swooner full of soft and fuzzy ga-ga baby talk?
I have not worked out what their magic is, but I know that I was infected with this obsessional ‘bug’, the moment I laid eyes on a schnauzer.
We live in a designated Koala area as the new house is located within a known corridor and adjacent to a protected Koala habitat. Yesterday, we spotted a Koala on our way home from essential shopping at the Hardware store.
This is not our first Koala sighting in our area. Several months ago, a male Koala was spotted resting in the lower branches of the same tree. See my post on Koala spotting here.
The dirty stain on the bottom indicates chlamydia
The Gumtree in which the furry marsupial was sitting, has a flourish of succulent new growth towards the crown, due, no doubt, to the recent rainfall. This has attracted another Koala occupant and this time it was a female with a Joey, (a baby Koala), in her pouch.
According to a neighbour living directly opposite, the koala had been in this tree for a week or so, I contacted the Koala Rescue to report the sighting.
The Rescue group has a number of volunteers who attend Koala sightings to perform a visual health check, as almost all Koalas in our State, are known to have a number of health issues, primarily Chlamydia infection. This is a particularly painful infection that can lead to Koala infertility, blindness and death. Along with Chlamydia, habitat loss has led to a significant decline in Koala populations to a point where they remain vulnerable.
Surveys have shown that some wild populations demonstrate a 100 percent rate of [Chlamydia] infection, which frequently leads to blindness, severe bladder inflammation, infertility and death. And treatment with antibiotics could create further problems for the marsupials, upsetting their gut microbes and making it difficult for them to digest the eucalyptus leaves that are a staple of their diet, researchers recently discovered.
The Moreton Bay Koala Rescue is an organization staffed by knowledgable volunteers who drop everything and run to aid a Koala. Marilyn and her able assistant used a set of binoculars to assess the Koala’s health from the ground, as the animal was too high to conduct a full-on assessment and rescue. In the video, they tapped the base of the tree with a stick, in order to assess her ease of movement and to get a better view of her as Koalas generally sleep during the day.
She may well be the Koala, known to rescuers as Barty, as she had a tag in her right ear, meaning that she is a female, (as women are always right!) and she did have a Joey in the pouch.
The Rescuers told us the Koala Mum has likely been carrying her Joey in the pouch, for around 6 months. In a few weeks time, this Joey will move out of the pouch and travel about on the Mum’s back for several months, until it is old enough and clever enough to live independently. If the Mum has chlamydia, she will, unfortunately, pass it on to the little Joey.
Koalas Killed on Roads in Breeding Season
Breeding season is when Koalas are on the move, crossing roads and hunting for a mate. This usually starts in July; perhaps it will start earlier this year, as daily temperatures have been higher than expected.
The Rescue stated that in the first 8 weeks of the breeding season in 2019, they received and cared for 22 injured Koalas, mostly as a result of being hit by cars. It is heartening that their numbers are still high in our region, but tragic that so many are still accidentally killed by motor vehicles when crossing the road.
Koalas are harmless creatures, they basically just want to eat their gum leaves, find a mate and sleep away most of the day. If you only ate one food, you might also sleep 18 hours in every 24 too! They are not endowed with speed and often travel at night when they are difficult to spot on the road.
Slow down if you drive through a known Koala Habitat.
Kangaroo Island Koalas
South Australia’s Kangaroo Island had the only population of Koalas in the country without Chlamydia infection. Sadly, it is believed up to 30,000 perished in the recent bushfires. 90 % of their food trees on the Island were burnt, so any surviving Koalas actually died from starvation, unless they were rescued. One resident claimed that you couldn’t walk ten metres in any part of the forest, without coming across a dead Koala carcass.
Koalas rescued from South Australian Bushfires
Why do we need to Protect Koala Habitat?
As incredible as it may seem, the Government still seems reluctant to protect Koala habitat. Koalas are specialised feeders; they are only able to eat four species of Eucalypt leaves and are thus, highly vulnerable to extinction. Ensuring that remaining Koala habitat is protected is a critical factor for their survival.
The Koala is an iconic symbol of Australia that brings millions of tourists and their dollars to our shores, yet it receives little recognition in the way of publicly funded support in return. After the recent bush fires, a new strategy to protect some realms of known Koala habitat in my own state, has even been criticised for not going far enough to cover many known Koala corridors.
Koala on Stradbroke Island
It is absolutely essential to protect any remaining Koala habitat. We have been blessed with a responsiblity for this beautiful creature and it desperately needs our help to survive.
In order to maintain viable populations, the Koalas must be free to roam within their range and interbreed to remain healthy. Protecting Koala populations with Koala fences may actually prevent males from finding a mate to breed with.
Report Koala Sightings
It is imperative, therefore, that all sighting of Koalas are reported and documented, so that their movements can be tracked and the data collected and shared with Government bodies. This will assist in protecctive planning decisions that aim to preserve the Koala and its habitat for future generations to enjoy.
May 3 is Wild Koala day for the Moreton Bay Koala Rescue – a major fundraising event had to be cancelled, due to Covid 19. They are a not for profit organization dependent on donations and community support.
May the Rescue continue their great work. Thanks to every one of them.
With the long awaited arrival of the recent rains, an old visitor returned to our garden. I do believe it is the same frog I wrote about him a few years back: –
I had a delightful green visitor in my garden. I found him hiding in the inner dark and cool realms of a motor scooter’s seat compartment, where he has been, apparently riding back and forth to the local train station for perhaps, several weeks. My daughter took some shots seen here, naming him Mr Schneider! Not sure of the reason for that. She is quite imaginative.
This frog is native to Australia and introduced to New Zealand.
He is quite a cute character who can apparently live up to 16 years. The males are smaller than the females and are the only ones to produce he characteristic croak at night, especially in summer when they breed.
The presence of frogs in the garden, it is said, is a good indicator of the health of the local environment and as such, I was really pleased to see this little guy. He is of course very welcome if he is keen on eating all the spiders, cockroaches and insects that make us cringe.
While commonly seeking shelter and availing themselves of still water in human habitats, like toilet bowls, potplants, tanks and swimming pools, an interesting fact is that frogs can scream to ward off predators, and change colour according to their mood, much like a chameleon. Even in the short space of time we observed him, he certainly seemed to lighten in colour. It is important to remember and to teach kids, that the touch of a dry human hand is extremely caustic to these frogs, indeed most frogs, so you must always have wet hands when handling them.
Our task this morning was just to guide him to a safe spot, no more hitchhiking on the motor scooter. So whilst capturing him on the old digital camera, he headed for the pot-plants in the window boxes on the front wall, and after a light mist with the garden hose, he squeezed himself into the hole in the side of the self watering pots.
The main danger to the green tree frog is the destruction of its habitat through wetland clearance and drainage.
We can all support the habitat of frogs by welcoming them into our garden.
And that is something every single one of us needs to ponder about.
Less frogs= more insects= indications that the environment is suffering.
Something to Ponder About 
