A ringside seat at the boxing.

I have posted in the past about kangaroos boxing on the hillside visible from my study window. This morning a pair of them went at it on the lawn much closer.  The clicking of my camera from indoors didn't bother them but this means the images which follow do suffer a tad from being taken through a window and from a relatively dark environment.  Also the movements are very quick leading to some blurring.

Most of the images require little commentary.

First we have the invitation to a stoush (a good Australian term, which I prefer to the West Side Story equivalent 'rumble').

 I think in Rugby Union scrumming terms this would follow the Whistling Willie's command to 'touch'.
 Engage!  This next image hints at the common posture of the head being stretched back, presumably to avoid eye gouging.  While it exposes the neck I have never seen biting involved.
 Airborne!


 Back to the grapple!

 At this point a small dog, inside the house, spotted what was going on and offered an opinion.  It caught their attention.
While working out if a third player (of a different Order) was going to join you might as well rearrange matters in the groin area.  A good scratch is always helpful.
 Nah.  Lets get back into it.
The eventual outcome was that the smaller 'roo broke away (out of my view) and thus the bout counts as a win for the larger one.  Both of them are way smaller than the alpha male in this mob.

Comments

Linda Shields said…
Oh my word--I cant imagine finding kangaroos sparring on my lawn! I get excited at the sight of a cute little possum wadding thru the yard. Butt hen I am in Eureka, Missouri USA. Ha! Thanks so much.
9 December 2013 at 05:33:00 GMT+11
Flabmeister said…
thanks for the comment Linda. I remember when I first emigrated to Australia -42 years ago - I was absolutely ecstatic at the sight of my first wild 'roo. No more, but a sight like yesterday still gives me a large buzz however.

Then again I have lived in various parts of North America for about 4 years and visited on holiday a few times and have never seen one of your possums. So that would really get me going!

Martin
9 December 2013 at 06:15:00 GMT+11
Jeni at Northern Rivers Dreaming said…
Martin,

This is wonderful. We roared with laughter. Thank you :)

Would you mind if we linked this post to our video of the same activity on our blog's Facebook page? It would be great for people to see how the fight moves break down.

Jeni
10 December 2013 at 10:07:00 GMT+11
Flabmeister said…
Jeni

Of course not, Feel free to use the stuff how you wish. I may have interfered a little with the order in which I took the images, but the overall idea is not too unreal. I suspect in total this went for about 20 minutes!

Martin
10 December 2013 at 15:37:00 GMT+11
Judi Gray said…
They are spectacular! I would never tire of watching them spar. I love the pics of them standing upright on their tails with their legs in the air kicking one another - it really shows how powerful they are! Judi
4 October 2014 at 14:30:00 GMT+10
Flabmeister said…
Thanks Judith. The images are still not as good as yours of the Red-necked Wallabies getting stuck in!
4 October 2014 at 20:51:00 GMT+10
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more