Saturday Critters - Aussie Animals

G’day from Melbourne Australia!

And welcome to my first ever Saturday Critters post.

Well actually G’day is a bit fake coming from me because as originally a Brit,

I’m more likely to say Good Morning!

But G’day is the official welcome here, so G’day it is…

I’m Wren.

My Little Wandering Wren blog is to share my travels with family and friends.

Now Aussie based for a while, it’s evolved into posts about my Australian life.
A bonus has been connecting with new Blogger friends across the world.

Photo No 1: The headless chook bird*

Of course my first photo has to be a bird!

These are actually the colourful Galah parrots that live in our street.

The top one represents me, the headless one, the bottom bird is one of my three teenage wren-lets asking ‘what’s for dinner?’!

Our local Galah’s in daylight!

We’re not off to a good start because I had to Google ‘critters’!

I did have the vague notion that it was some animal,

but wasn’t sure whether it had to be the cute furry sort?

So I was pleased to find out a critter is a

US and Canadian a dialect word for creature
Which explains why an Aussie Brit was a tad confused…

Not that I can’t do the cute, furry critters!
Let me introduce you to our crazy poodle.
He knows the routine, sit, stay, click and treat!
Mutt is a four year old Cavoodle, blog dog
He is always up to something worth getting the camera out for,
he has a starring role in my blog…

The Crazy Poodle blog dog – Sit, stay and grin

We also have another member of the family, Little Miss Hussy.
Our Miss Hussy is a three year old thoroughbred racehorse
who is just coming back into training after a spell at grass.

We have a tiny share in her, but we get a massive amount of pleasure
seeing her race, especially if she wins!

Miss Hussy – Two wins, a second, third and a fifth…

As I now know that a critter can be any creature,
let me bring you up close and personal with some less cute Aussie ones!
Now I live in Melbourne, Australia
and I do get asked about the scary Aussie wildlife.
We do occasionally get up close and personal with the snakes, crocs and spiders but on a good day, it’s only on holiday with a pair of binoculars!

Snake in Darwin, NT outback museum

In the last twelve months we have had holidays in Queensland and the Northern Territories which has brought us closer to some of these critters.

We do have some poisonous whitetail and red back spiders in Melbourne,

which we keep an eye out for, but they are not that common…

so it’s a huge ‘Wooah‘ from me
when we come face to face with this humongous spider
across our path whilst on holiday in the NT.

spider, Mary’s River, Darwin, NT

Over the last few weeks in Western Australia and New South Wales, we’ve sadly lost two surfers who have been fatally attacked by sharks. I have never seen a shark in the wild in Australia, but then I’m not a surfer.

This year whilst visiting Sentosa Aquarium, in Singapore I photographed this shark.

Sharks at Sentosa Marina, Singapore

In weeks to come I hope to show you the more appealing side of Australian wildlife. I should be showing you kangaroos, koalas, platypus, echidna etc
but it’s usually just the tourists who photograph them.
Next week I am going on a road trip so will try to take some photos!

Thank you for taking the time to read my post,
I hope to visit your blog soon.
I love reading all my comments and always take the time to reply.
For those of you who are not on Google +,
the e-mail button on my blog sidebar reaches me with a private message.

Thank you to Eileen for establishing Saturday Critters

Have a great weekend!