Some of our neighbourhood friends.

Today I have been out giving the outside of the house a bit of a tidy up.  I was out in the backyard before having a bit of a clean up out there and had some of our wildlife friends popped by to say hello.  We have lots of birds and various wildlife around where we live in Australia and some of them are quite friendly.   We have lots and lots of Australian Water Dragons, which are a type of lizard.

Australian Water Dragon on our back porch

Another Australian Water Dragon in my backyard.

They can grow to be quite big, the females grow to about 60cm (2 feet) and the males can grow to about a metre (3 feet) and it's lovely in spring after they are all coming out of hibernation from the winter and seeing the little babies running around.  Some of them come right up to our back door and peer in the windows, obviously wondering if we are home, we can go outside and they are lying on the dogs bed, LOL.  We don't ever pick them up as they are wild and they do have very long sharp claws, which would cause some damage if you picked them up and they tried to get away,  but they come right up to us near our feet and their favourite food..... Banana!  They love to snack on banana!  When we stand outside and throw some banana to the couple who might be out on the lawn, all of a sudden they come from everywhere and we can have 10 or 15 of them all scrambling after a little bit of banana.  We have had one chase a ball before that we have thrown, over and over, they can be quite funny lizards.  Whilst they can grow quite big, they are pretty harmless, they don't attack you, if they are scared they will just run away and boy can they run fast.  It's quite funny, they will get up on their back legs and just take off, LOL

Anyway it was a successful tidy up outside, hosing down the outdoor furniture and the pavement, the gardens and lawns were already tidy, we have just had a lot of rain recently so there were a lot of leaves everywhere and dirt, but it's all nice and clean again now.

If you would like to read and learn a bit more about the Australian Water Dragon you can find some info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_water_dragon

Off to start getting dinner ready.