It has always amused me that the tourists to the US that I’ve spoken to are often very excited to see raccoons, and disappointed if they don’t see them before they leave.
Some others I’ve noticed on the east coast of the US are blue jays and cardinals. Boy, do people get excited about those if they’ve never seen them before! Very pretty birds of course, just very easy to get used to and see as uninteresting as well.
I was excited to see squirrels, lightning bugs and a racoon in the US.
When people come to Australia they obviously want to see kangaroos, koalas and platypus and quokka. Koalas are very rare to see in the wild, and a visit to a zoo will score you a sleeping ball on a branch. Kangaroos are frequently roadkill if you go outside the city. Quokka require a long trip to a really remote location. You’ll also almost never see a platypus, even the ones at the zoo you might catch a water ripple at best.
But if you’re headed to Sydney city, guaranteed you’ll spot the almighty and much maligned “bin chicken”, our Australian white ibis. Often not quite white from the bins. At night they serenade you with their collective honking from their tree, which can be easily spotted by the masses of white poop underneath. And you’ll see fruit bats in the evening. Hopefully not the daytime corpses hanging from electrical cables while they slowly rot, but that’s not altogether unlikely either, unfortunately.
Seeing the flying foxes around Sydney surprised me.
The bin chickens, I simultaneously felt a little sorry for, and enjoyed watching.
The bin chickens are my kin, I’m in the small minority here who appreciate them.
And yeah, the flying foxes are a surprise for most foreigners. They’re also pretty big and often fly low at dusk, so they can be slightly startling too, even though they’re just adorable fuzzy harmless nectar drinkers. It’s a pity they screech too, it might be easier to reassure non-locals that they’re not dangerous.
People are also often surprised to see all the other Sydney city wildlife and how much of it there is, especially rainbow lorrikeets. Everyone loves the lorrikeets, but people from the northern hemisphere are especially awestruck when they see them. It’s understandably almost a little surreal to have such brightly colored parrots hanging out in the middle of a city, if you’re someone who comes from a city that is just pigeons and sparrows.
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Pigeons are pretty dope though. They waddle around like they are part of the landscape, and it’s like “bro you can fly why are you walking?”
Sorry about you not seeing the lightning bug.
Insects are dying out a bit.
Oh no, i got to see them. This was a decade ago, and I was told even then that there used to be many more. I was happy to see any at all though, I had only ever seen them in movies and they almost seemed mythical. They are pretty magical, it’s very sad to hear they’re almost gone.
I had to check with my Australian colleagues because I couldn’t believe ibis were called bin chickens. They are silent, beautiful here, land on the lawn like angels, peck around awhile then take off in a beautiful cloud of white wings. I thought it was a joke! But they confirmed. Apparently you’ve developed a subspecies.
Don’t forget the wild cockatoos! Those are a sight. (Source: my ex-step-sister lives in Melbourne.)
Yellow crested cockatoos, galahs etc can be terrorists to trees and shrubs. You can be walking along and on the ground see piles of leaves and little branches and fruit with one bite out of them.
The cockies have very sharp beaks and will just chomp through anything. This includes aerials, cables or anything else they think looks like fun. Sometimes they will even party in your room
Do NOT put your finger near one.
Which kind? We’ve got bunches. The sulphur crested are the most famous, and they are great but can be vandals
What about crocodiles? Alligators are in most reasonably large retention ponds in Florida. Most places just relocate them once they reach a certain size. They’re pretty common. Knew a guy in high school who had a side hustle of removing them from people’s swimming pools. They’re pretty weird if you’re not from a place used to them.
If you want to see a croc, just go walking near the shallow water of the top half of the country’s coast. You won’t see the croc for long, and it will be the last thing you ever see, but it will be up close and very personal.
Seriously though, you don’t go to see salt water crocodiles in the wild or even go near any body of water on the northern coast. If you can see one with the naked eye in the wild, you’re already too close. They’re extremely fast, extremely aggressive, and the males get up to 6m / 20ft long and 1000kg / 2200lb. They are very much a zoo only thing.
Good to know! I’ll put the Ibis and fruit bat on my Australia bucket list, along with a Huntsman. Although the latter are so widespread that I’ve probably already seen some living in America. But I’m guessing the Australian Huntsmen are a bit different from the North American ones.
How can you speak of the bin chicken and not link to the song?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
link to the song?
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It never occurred to me y’all didn’t have squirrels or lightning bugs. Like it makes sense with squirrels, y’all got a dearth of placentals but dang
First time I landed in Australia on the Gold Coast I followeed a bin chicken for 20 minutes with a camera trying to get the perfect picture like it was some rare exotic bird. I’m sure the locals were sremoveding or openly laughing behind my back, I dont blame them