Local wildlife continues to surprise

Over the years, I've posted photos of a kangaroo in my street (twice), possums under the deck (here's one example, but there are many more), cockatoos, corellas and more unusual birds.   Of course we get more wildlife that I haven't photographed:  brush turkeys, blue tongued lizards, as well as your lorikeets, flying foxes, kookaburras, etc.   Lots of Australian wildlife, all within 18 km of the heart of the city, but it's not as if my house borders bushland, although it is within a couple of kilometres of patches of it.

Anyhow, last night the dog was doing its job of unnecessarily guarding our house by looking out the front window and barking at passing humans and their canines, when she obviously spotted something walking past closer to the house.  I couldn't see anything, but she was highly excited, and I eventually went out the front to find this:

Yes, a bundle of spikes* that is an echidna, with its head buried in the corner, I suspect in order to eat ants which are always in that area.   It was breathing and scraping, but we just let it be.  I checked half an hour later and it had moved on.

I had once seen one of these on a footpath near the bushy riverbank a couple of kilometres from me, but never really expected to see one in my street.

If only I ever spot a koala in the gum trees in the small park in front of the house (very unlikely, but the way things are going, seems I shouldn't rule it out entirely) I'll have some sort of Australian wildlife bingo game triumph that I never have expected to when I moved into this suburb.



*  now that I think of it, looks a tad like a bicycle helmet as designed for Mad Max; or one for a severe swooping magpie deterrent.