Wednesday 28 November 2012

owls, echidna and a seal

Penny had a wonderful time at Best Friend Holiday Retreat last week.

I'm glad she didn't notice this little echidna walking around each day near our cabin.



The echidna always fossicked around in the mulch outside the huge fenced yards that are such a great feature of the park, so she was quite safe from dogs.

Up in the tree next to our cabin there was a family of owls - I think boobook owls. Mum looked after the baby at the nest for the first few days, with Dad sitting nearby, but later in the week the baby was sitting on a separate branch.





On our last day, we saw a seal sitting on the beach and I learned something new. My companions, more experienced at care of dogs, were worried when we saw the seal in the distance, and called back the one dog who was ahead of us, playing in the waves. Fortunately he didn't notice the seal heading past him into the sea, because I've discovered that seals are very dangerous to dogs. My friends told me a seal could potentially kill a dog.

And I wouldn't want any of our dogs to hurt the seal, of course. I've read that it's illegal to go closer than thirty metres to a seal resting on a beach.

Last year we saw a baby koala at the dog resort. I wonder what we'll see next time.

4 comments:

Molly the Airedale said...

Your echidna looks similar to our porcupine. Are those quills on her body? What an interesting post today, Penny!

Love ya lots,
Mitch and Molly

parlance said...

Mitch and Molly, I think the echidna would the be the southern hemisphere equivalent of the porcupine. They're both mammals, but one interesting difference is that the echidna lays eggs.

Milo and Jet said...

Hi Penny
Those owls are actually tawny frog mouths and aren't really owls at all there actually the largest member of the nightjar family.

parlance said...

Milo and Jet, thanks for that info. I didn't know. I'm off now to look up nightjars on the net. I love finding out new things!