Urban wildlife on the Gold Coast

In the UK we get urban foxes all the time, and every city has its population of pigeons. Here they have flying foxes, and white ibis instead.

The birds are quite cute...they seem wildly exotic at first, but they're all over the place. They're funny things, and are now being regarded as pests as they are moving rapidly into urban areas, while the populations in their natural habitats are decreasing. They look rather stately, as they don't seem to do much rushing around, either on foot or in the air. But they do rather pong.

Picture: http://wildbirdrescues.com.au/


And then there are the flying foxes...

Picture: http://greendean.com.au/tag/epa/

Picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-headed_flying_fox

They are a type of fruit or 'mega' bat. And, unlike other bats, they don't use echolocation.

We walked under a big roost of them in the park around the corner on my first day. They're noisy buggers, and you want to watch you don't get pooped on! I saw one last night, swooping out of the night sky on huge, silent wings. Quite a disconcerting thing, with a wing-span of about three feet. Seriously. There's no denying that vampires spring immediately to mind when you see something like that.

Sadly, they are listed as 'vulnerable' on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.