blinnov’s blog

Australia is a unique place. They call Australia as “green continent”, but the biggest part of it is a desert which can have any color but green. Australian landscape has been made up by powerful water streams flowing through it for many thousands years, but now it is the droughts country in the world. Many of Australian native animals managed not only not to extinct as civilization came, but multiplied their population so last year Australian government were going to shoot several thousand of kangaroos grazing around Canberra as they were creating certain problems to some military base or something like that. Of course, not all native animals were that lucky but many of them still do not seem like presence of civilization cause any inconvenience to them.

I have already got sick of silly questions about bears stealing vodka from school students on the streets of Moscow. Indeed, it is a big luck (well, it could be rather bad luck) to meet a bear in wild in Russia. But if you want to see one of the Australian symbols in wild, there is no need to go to the Zoo. It is better to visit one of many parks, preferable one with BBQs in it.

I took this picture of the monster with fossil camera Canon A510 from the distance of one meter. It was sitting just above the BBQ on the branch

In most cases, they are not alone. This giant kingfisher had a company of its fellow nearby busy eating chicken drumstick it has got somewhere. In nature, they eat insects, lizards, snakes and, as far as I know, even mammals of small size. First they catch their victim and then bash it on the tree or the ground. Cooked food is no exception – that drumstick was bashed several times (probably, it just tastes better?)

It did not seem worried about our presence at all, as well it completely ignored other spectators

The next photo I took seating on the grass in two meters from the bird. It looks like many local animals just do not know that they have to be afraid of humans and hide when they appear in sight instead of trying to see if they have something to eat and try to steal some appealing food. At least, Australia is full of stories about steaks or sausages disappear on wings followed by loud laugh told by almost anyone who ever fired a BBQ. Even if just on the balcony.