I recently posted some photos of Southern Brown Banicoots, Isoodon obesulus, in my backyard. The poor quality photo below is also a bandicoot but this one is a much rarer animal. It is the Eastern Barred Bandicoot, Perameles gunnii. I've been at my current residence for some years now and only once have we had the privilege of seeing this small nocturnal marsupial (a bit smaller than a rabbit) on our property. .
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Here are my notes from that occasion:
It was first spotted, from the lounge room window, hopping about in the the front garden. It then made it’s way up the driveway to the backyard. I grabbed the camera and we went out to have a closer look. We soon found it foraging away under the Nectarine tree. That’s when I discovered I had no memory card in the camera. I watched it for 2 or 3 minutes while someone ran back to the house for the memory card. It just stayed there going about it’s business only a couple of metres away. Of course, once the camera was set up and ready, the bandicoot’s sixth sense (camera detection and aversion) kicked in and it started getting nervous. The end result was one usable but blurry photo and one wonderfully clear recollection of the encounter.
The Eastern Barred Bandicoot is extinct in South Australia. In Victoria it is ‘critically endangered’. Here in Tasmania it has already disappeared from some areas and overall numbers have declined since the early 1990’s. Fortunately it is still common in some localities. What a privilege it was to have seen one in our own backyard.
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