Wildlife Watching in Australia

I visited Craigie Bushland with a good friend of mine, Paul, who was interested in seeing some wildlife and also practising some night time photography. Some of his great photos can be found here.

I had visited Craigie once before but haven’t blogged about it as yet.

Craigie Bushland is found just off Whitfords Ave, Craigie behind the Craigie Leisure Centre and managed by the City of Joondalup. There is a small parking place just behind the leisure centre on this Google Maps Pin. The reserve encompasses 56ha, of which 42ha has a predator free fence. The fence was put up in 2010 and 3 years later 43 Quenda (Isoodon fusciventer) were reintroduced to the reserve¹. See the below YouTube for more information and the positive impact of Quenda.

We parked, geared up and headed into the reserve where we quickly found a lovely Brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula).

We were using the thermal camera as well as spotlighting and found a sleeping Gray fantail in a bush by its heat signature.

We had heard a number of rustles in the bush but hadn’t had a good sighting of a Quenda until we spotted this in the thermal.

It then allowed us to observe it feeding and take a number of photos.

As we headed back towards the car I was able to record a bat using my bat detector (Echo Meter Touch 2 which links to your phone). The spectrograph can be seen below. The frequency of the call can be seen between 10-15 kHz which is within the range of human hearing and identifies it as a White-striped free-tailed bat (Austronomus australis).

The call can be heard but it is faint – the metallic ting-ting is the bat echolocating. These bats are one of the largest microbats of the Perth region. They fly fast and high hunting for insect prey. I have been doing more bat recording and will blog in the future. There are 9 different species in the south-west. Other than the White-striped, the rest of the species echolocate above the range of human hearing (ultrasonic range ie >20kHz).

We continued on and found another Quenda feeding and moving along the path.

We headed back to the car and found 2 possums just near the exit.

We had a great night seeing a number of animals and also getting some nice shots, exhibiting natural behaviours. Craigie bushland is a great spot not far from the Perth CBD for urban wildlife and especially if you want to find Quenda.