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UK Marsupials

You'll find these in area called The Roaches which is somewhere between Leek and Buxton
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I live not far from thr Roaches, sadly I've never seen or met anyone who's seen the wallabies. They escaped from a private zoo owned by a local eccentric. OT, but the Roaches are very Fortean - there's Lud's Church, a steep canyon, said to have been the setting for "Gawain and the Green Knight". There is at least one healing/fertility stone, the bawdstone. And there is the supposedly bottomless "Doxy''s pool, said to harbour a mermaid.
 
Originally posted by molga parrot
[B OT, but the Roaches are very Fortean - there's Lud's Church, a steep canyon, said to have been the setting for "Gawain and the Green Knight". There is at least one healing/fertility stone, the bawdstone. And there is the supposedly bottomless "Doxy''s pool, said to harbour a mermaid.
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Molga! I almost broke my neck clambering around Lud's Church that day ;)

FT edited my letter because I suggested Janet & Colin Bord might have been interested in Lud's Church and the story attatched to it (they were still writing a regular article for FT at the time). It's a very serene place I think.

We'd already tracked Otters around Salt (Staffs) and had an encounter with Red Deer somewhere (I'm not disclosing that one because some sicko might decide to go a-hunting)
 
Wallaby Find Ignites Island Mystery

By Paul O’Hare, Scottish Press Association


A dead wallaby has been found on a Scottish island, according to baffling locals.

A motorist found the marsupial on a main road 100 yards from Islay airport yesterday morning.

Police and environmental health officials examined the 3.5ft animal before it was buried on the Hebridean island.

An airport spokesman said: “We think it is a wallaby. It had a broken leg and looked as if it had been hit by a car.”

On its origins, he said: “We get 20,000 passengers a year but we have never had any wallabies.

“I don’t think there is any record of the animals on the island. It’s a bit of mystery really.”

It is believed there are wallabies living in the wild in the Loch Lomond area.

But the spokesman said: “They are strong swimmers but it would be stretching the imagination for one to swim from Loch Lomond to Islay.”

He said the most likely theory is that the animal was killed on the mainland and dumped on the island, perhaps as a practical joke
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Original story
 
It's not good to be a wallaby these days, is it? :(
 
How far offshore is Islay? Wallabies can swim, you know.

Might be worth going to check if there are any more.
 
Swan said:
Wallaby Find Ignites Island Mystery

By Paul O’Hare, Scottish Press Association


A dead wallaby has been found on a Scottish island, according to baffling locals.

.......

Original story
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Puzzle over dead wallaby

By Frank Walker
June 20, 2004
The Sun-Herald


The mystery has thickened over a dead wallaby found beside the road to the airport on the remote windswept Scottish island of Islay.

How the female wallaby got there has intrigued the 3400 people who live on the island as the only wildlife normally there stems from the famous whisky distilleries that dot the island.

"It could be an omen before [last night's] second rugby Test against the Wallabies," suggested Islay airport manager Andrew Lindsay, who found the wallaby early on June 8.

"We're famous for our whisky on Islay. A few Aussies have got plastered here over the years, but not wallabies."

Islay is the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland, about two hours by ferry from the mainland.

Mr Lindsay called police, who photographed the wallaby before burying it.

At first locals put it down to a prank by someone who ran over a wallaby on the mainland and dumped the carcass when they got to Islay by ferry.

But there is a growing belief that a wallaby could have done a bit of island hopping to reach Islay, with the widest gap a five-kilometre swim across the treacherous Sound of Jura.

Local fishermen say strong currents could have swept the plucky little wallaby south as far as Islay before it came a cropper following a one-sided bout with a car at night.

The nearest wildlife park that has wallabies is at Inveraray at Argyll, 80 kilometres away on the mainland - but they aren't missing any.

There is a large colony at a park in Loch Lomond and over the years many wallabies have escaped parks to make a life in the rugged highlands.

Locals also suggest the wallaby could have dropped from the skies as a passing Qantas plane went overhead.

That theory could be due more to the excellent Laphroaig and Bowmore whiskies.

But local newspaper editor Brian Palmer said two local folk had reported seeing a creature they didn't recognise with a long tail hopping about in the hills in the past two months. They knew it wasn't a sheep as they don't tend to hop an awful lot.

The paper's proprietors are thinking of offering a reward for anyone who can solve the mystery.

The mystery has since been reported as far afield as India, Pakistan, US and Canada.
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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/19/1087595783043.html?oneclick=true
 
WAYWARD WALLABY CAUGHT ON THE HOP

22:00 - 22 September 2004

The sight of a wallaby bounding alongside the Wellington Relief Road would be hard for many to believe. But that was the surreal image greeting motorists and dog walkers as they caught the Somerset Skippy on the hop during the final leg of its escape from its home in the Blackdown Hills.

Only one person reported what they saw last Monday to the RSPCA, however, and it was only when the bounder came to a standstill in a field next to Theresa Morgan's paddock off Middle Green Road that he was captured.

The 40-year-old care assistant, who lives in Wellesley Park but keeps horses on her five-acre fields across the relief road, mistook the marsupial for a deer when she first spotted him that evening.

"I was in the car when I saw it sitting in the field opposite my neighbour's gateway," Theresa told the WWN.

"At first I thought it was a deer, but then I realised it was a wallaby. I phoned The Mount Veterinary Surgery, then I called my husband Adrian and got him to go out with a lamp and have a look.

"He brought along a few friends but there was no chance he was going to catch him - he was too quick and it was too dark, so we left it for the night.

But mother-of-three Theresa was not going to give up without a fight, and at the crack of dawn she was back at the gateway where she first spotted the wallaby.

"I couldn't see him at first because he was hiding, but he popped his head up and there he was between two field rollers," she said.

Theresa was soon back on the phone to Adrian, who this time asked only one friend for back-up, and before long both men were back in the field discussing strategies.

"Because he was wedged between the rollers, Adrian went one end and Phil took the other side. They went head-on in there, one on the tail, one on the head, and managed to catch him," said Theresa.

"We put him in the back of the Land Rover, took him home and put him in the garage.

"The RSPCA had heard about it from the vet's and came round later to pick him up and check him over, because he appeared to have cut his leg."

RSPCA officers were able to track the owner - who does not wish to be identified, for fear of theft - and the wallaby was back hopping around his home in the hills that night.

"The owner came down and gave us a bottle of wine," said Theresa. "I thought it was really funny when he told us the animal's name was Willoughby, because it made me think of 'wandering wallaby Willoughby'.

"You could tell it was very well looked after and loved because it was in very good condition and you could get close to him.

"There is no way we would have just left him there. We would have hung on to him for as long as it took to find the owner.

"I'm just sorry my stables were full of hay and we had to put him in the garage, but we made him comfy and gave him two rich tea biscuits and some horse feed.

"He was very partial to the biscuits but didn't think much of the feed."

RSPCA spokesman Jo Barr said Willoughby was healthy and well when they found him and what they thought was a cut turned out to be nothing.

She added: "The owner was very pleased to be reunited with his pet. He looked a little bedraggled but was OK despite his ordeal."

No licence is needed to keep a wallaby as a pet, though Miss Barr does not recommend it.

"They are fast-moving, so you would need to have a lot of space and good fencing," she said.

"It might also be difficult to find a vet in these parts who would have knowledge of how to treat a wallaby."
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Source
 
Anyone want to go hunting wallabies in early November? (While I'm in Britain.)

With cameras, only, of course.
 
Well, that's where all the Rugby is, isn't it?

I'm going, I'm going...
 
melf said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/3748344.stm

Capital search for 'kangaroo'

wallaby seen in cardiff
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the "Cardiff Kangaroo" turned out to be the "Cardiff dog/fox with mange"

'Wallaby' may be a mangy fox
The RSPCA has revealed that a wallaby spotted in Cardiff may actually be a fox suffering from mange and a bad leg.
Police have been investigating several sightings in the Llanishen and Lisvane areas of the city. At first, amateur photographs taken of the creature suggested it might be a wallaby, or even a young kangaroo.

But an RSPCA inspector who caught a glimpse of it has now said it is probably a fox with a moulting coat caused by the skin condition mange.

A spokeswoman said the fox seemed to have an injury to one of its legs and was limping - which may be why witnesses said it appeared to have been hopping.

"It is looking quite poorly. We have set a trap for it so we can catch it and take it to a vet for treatment," she added.

"There is, of course, no way of knowing if this is the same animal but the one that was pointed out to our inspector was a fox."

The animal has been caught on camera in the Cardiff suburbs several times, including on a garden patio.

One city resident, Wayne Joinson, photographed it in his garden.

"It looked very odd, it had a grey body and a different sort of pointed nose," he said.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/wales/3755162.stm

Published: 2004/10/19 10:08:49 GMT

© BBC MMIV
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A more likely meeting place for wallabies is Buckinghamshire as this BBC report from the end of august shows (they are unlikely to be masnky foxes as I'm sure the animal sanctiury in question can tell the difference when they are treating ingered animals and fishing dead ones out of swimming pools)

'Wild' wallaby sightings rising
Reports of wallabies living wild in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and surrounding areas, have increased.
It is thought the animals have escaped from country estates or wildlife parks in the area.

The marsupials have been spotted near Henley, Oxfordshire, and Stokenchurch, Buckinghamshire, a wildlife hospital said on Tuesday.

Wallabies cannot legally be released in the UK, under the terms of the Countryside and Wildlife Act.

'Stuck in silly places'

They are found naturally in Australia or Papua New Guinea.

But Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital in Buckinghamshire has had half-a-dozen calls about wallabies in trouble so far this year.

One drowned in a swimming pool, while others were killed on the road.

A spokesman for Tiggywinkles said: "We're starting to get calls, especially from the Stokenchurch area, for wallabies, which weren't there before.

"We only get calls about wallabies when they're in trouble.

"The more animals you get, the more trouble you get.

"They get in silly places, so we'll just get out there and rescue them."


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 613780.stm

Published: 2004/08/31 11:29:31 GMT

© BBC MMIV
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A wallaby was also spotted in buckinghamshire by 2 austrailans on the 15th of december:

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/sear ... ailway.php
Wallaby seen on Buckingham railway

By staff reporter


TWO Australian tourists captured what appears to be a wallaby on film as it hopped across railway tracks in Buckinghamshire.

Ironically photographer Hugh Sykes, 63, and his wife Lesley, 59, had expected to see British wildlife during their trip from down under.

Mr Sykes, from Sydney, said: "We are still pinching ourselves," and Mrs Sykes added: "It didn't occur to me it could be real."

This latest sighting, near Princes Risborough at the weekend, follows the discovery of a dead wallaby in late October by motorists on the M40 near Stokenchurch.


2:27pm Wednesday 15th December 2004
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Have you seen marsupials on the loose in south Bucks?
By Kris Hall

EXOTIC wildlife researcher Chris Mullins is bounding down to south Bucks to investigate a boom in wallaby and kangaroo sightings.

The 53-year-old from Loughborough has tracked more than 300 species around the UK including primates in Norfolk, a crocodile in Staffordshire and wild boar in Sussex.

But now the enthusiast of all that is non-native hopes to survey the mysterious marsupials in a bid to monitor numbers and trace colonies.

He told the Star: "From the sightings I may be able to draw up a plan. Reports of sightings are on the increase, but I need help.

"Wallabies are not a very easy animal to track. They don't leave signs like wild boar. They're extremely elusive. But the plan is to establish trends and possible locations, and ideally track their movements."

Chris is urging Star readers who make "a visual" to contact his research group Beastwatch UK, which he set up four years ago.

He added: "I guess it's my passion. It's the shock factor of seeing something exotic. It's kept me going through cancer and a marital breakdown."

In the past two years there were reportedly more than 100 kangaroo and wallaby sightings in the Home Counties.

More recently Star readers have reported seeing wallabies in Stokenchurch, Frieth, and Cadmore Common. Even screen and stage star Colin Baker came face to face with our Australian visitors.

He said: "It must have been a couple of years ago now. Our milkman had seen one and I had been taking the mickey out of him for weeks.

"Then, hey presto, I was driving down Bolter End Lane and I saw what was definitely a wallaby sitting on the roadside. It just jumped into the woods. That's what wallabies do. They don't sit on the roadside blowing the bagpipes."

Animal experts believe the rise in sightings could be attributed to the animals escaping from zoos and wildlife parks but the nearest to south Bucks is Whipsnade, in Bedfordshire.

A zoo spokesman said: "We have a lot of inquiries about wallabies and kangaroos. We have secure fencing and all our animals are accounted for. They are counted on a daily basis."

If you spot a wallaby then email Chris Mullins at [email protected]

Bucks Free Press 10:01am Friday 14th January 2005
http://www.bucksfreepress.co.uk/news/ba ... _bucks.php[/url]
 
more wallabies

Wallaby catches police on the hop

A search is under way after a wallaby was spotted bouncing along a busy road in a Derbyshire town.
Drivers said they saw the animal on Thursday on Walton Road, close to Drakelow Power Station.

But Derbys Police have been unable to trace the animal since. They are trying to find out where it came from.

A spokesman said: "We are in touch with a local man who owns a number of wallabies and we are trying to ascertain whether it is one of his."

He added: "We have been out to the area... but as yet we have been unable to locate the marsupial."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/e ... 199601.stm
Published: 2005/01/23 11:35:24 GMT

© BBC MMV
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Cd we/Shd we do anything to help the Beds/Bucks Wallabies?

Hi everyone, this maybe should be part of OOPA thread, I'll leave it in the laps of the mods...

Reading the Out of Place Animals thread there appears to be compelling evidence for a population of wallabies in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and possibly Derbyshire as well.

I personally would love wallabies to become a fixture in the British countryside, they're sooooo cute (and they'd provide a valuable food source for ABCs ;) ). But is their anything we can do to give them a helping hand, and would it be legal and (more importantly) ethical to do so?

I'm just of to the woods to..... feed the pigeons, yeees that's right, the pigeons...
 
IMO really not a good idea to help them too much, because historically introduced grazing herbivores that develope too large a population have a tendency to be slaughtered on mass under the guise of population control... even the cute ones

Best to leave them to find their own sustainable level, or they may be appear on a dinner table near you soon ;)
 
yeah, see your point. Was thinking more in terms of helping them reach a population level where they can't be wiped out by hard winter like the ones in the peak district were (suposedly). If their sustainable level is low, like the ones in Hawaii, then so be it. If there were to be a population explosion, well, we could always release the wolves....
 
I don't see what the problem with having them appear on the dinner table would be. Kangaroo is quite tasty, wallaby would be similar, I think.

And as for population explosion, consider it payback for the bloody British introducing rabbits down here.

Seriously, a series of sustainable populations offshore could be beneficial to conservation programs. One of the problems experienced by endangered populations is one of insufficient genetic diversity. We could conceivably use the offshore populations to help beef the gene pool up a bit, depending on which particular species are available.
 
Interestingly enough i have learnt today that there is a small group of Wallabies living on the Avon/Gloucester border and are sometimes visible from the M5.
 
Painy said:
Interestingly enough i have learnt today that there is a small group of Wallabies living on the Avon/Gloucester border and are sometimes visible from the M5.
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Ooooohh, never heard that one! Are they captive or feral? Any source for this at all? (am starting to worry myself with wallaby obsession)




Seriously, a series of sustainable populations offshore could be beneficial to conservation programs. One of the problems experienced by endangered populations is one of insufficient genetic diversity. We could conceivably use the offshore populations to help beef the gene pool up a bit, depending on which particular species are available.
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The only populations which are definitely established I know of are on the Isle of Mann and in Hawaii. The IoM ones are Rock Wallabies (quite common, no?) and the ones in Hawaii have allegedly speciated into a new Hawaiin wallaby strain. The only sources re this speciation I've found on t'internet are ropey creationist ones tho....

The Hawaiin population is a couple of hundred in an enclosed valley, started from an escaped population of 2, so they look likely to be a bit of an evolutionary cul-de-sac.
 
staffordshire walabies

8 years ago I spotted a roaming walaby at night in the carpark of Barnswood scout camp. This is near the town leek in Staffordshire.

I believe there was a private zoo on the Roaches estate, about 8 miles from Leek. The walabies had escaped just after the war (WW2) and had been breeding.

Has anyone else seen walabies in this area recently ?
 
I've seen them at The Roaches but not in recent years. I mentioned this in another post but a Midlands Sunday tabloid ran an article a few [3? 4?] years ago stating that they [The Roaches wallabies] had all but died off apart from one surviving male.

That being said there have been other reports since that article that the colony has survived and is still breeding. I can't find those sources at hand but I'm fairly confident that there may be wallabies still roaming in Staffordshire if there are sightings in next door Derbyshire.
 
I had read an newspaper article a few years ago by a guy of was doing a survey on sightings. I never got around to emailing him. I think he was from the midlands...

I hope the walablies are still there..... perhaps some ABCs have moved in to the area!
 
How long does an animal or group of animals have to be resident in a country before they are considered 'native' and then protected ?

Having seen a walably in the staffordshire area I am happy to have themin the wild. I am not so happy about big cats, aligators and snakes being on the loose !
 
Loch Lomond wallabies caught on camera


10 March 2006 13:23


There have been rumours for years, but the legendary Loch Lomond wallabies have finally been caught on camera. Thirty years after they were introduced to Inchconnan from down under, the marsupials seem to have gladly swapped Sydney for Scotland.

The only way to track the wallabies down was to get onto the shore by boat.There has never been photographic proof of their existence so the cameramen had to tread carefully. Slowly but surely they crept closer and closer and then suddenly they emerged, camouflaged by the undergrowth into the open.
These amazing images of the Australian marsupials are confirmation that local stories of sightings are not as fanciful as they might have seemed.

The mini kangaroos only come out early in the morning and late at night and are part of a mysterious colony which have been on the private island of Inchconnan since the early 1970s.

Some have made a break for the mainland - it is thought they might be able to swim the one and half miles using their long tails, but the wallabies seem quite happy to hop around the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
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Source
 
'Wallaby' hops through woman's Lyme Regis garden
18 May 2011 Last updated at 07:57

[video]

A woman from Lyme Regis has taken some extraordinary footage of what appears to be a wallaby hopping through her garden.
Jan Cooper said the creature spent nearly two hours in her garden, before disappearing over the fence. She spoke to BBC Breakfast.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13436208

PS: An earlier thread on a wallaby in Cornwall:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37488
 
*bump*

November 2020 study on the wild wallaby population of the UK, and the good news is there seem to be plenty about and they might even be breeding:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.6877

'"Where’s wallaby? Using public records and media reports to describe the status of red-necked wallabies in Britain"

More here, including footage of a pair in Cornwall:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/nov...n-the-u-k-and-may-be-there-for-good-1.5799646

"That might explain the 95 wallaby sightings between 2008 and 2018 — in gardens, lanes and along motorways — that Caravaggi was able to document and verify. These were from media reports and in responses to a website he established so people could report sightings directly to him. Sightings were relatively common in some areas, but so rare in others, they would often make headlines.

"The news reports are often accompanied by things like, 'I can't believe what I saw' or 'wondered what I was seeing,'" Caravaggi said. "We do have some areas where wallabies have attained a kind of celebrity status. So they have Facebook pages, web pages, and people in some areas are not accustomed to seeing wallabies.""
 
I blame The Spice Girls, wallabies got a lot more popular in Britain after they did that song about them.
 
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