We are welcome visitors. But leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but memories

Taking time to get down into local bushland with my camera is my idea of taking a break away from the world for awhile. Once I am immersed in the sights and sounds of the bush all the worries and speed of life seems to suddenly slow down and I relax. It may sound corny but during these times I feel part of my surroundings.

I tend to think of us as tourists when we visit bushland areas as that is what we surely must look like to the creatures that live there. When people cut down trees, remove fallen timber for firewood, dump rubbish, ride dirt bikes and whatever else they may do to disturb our native bushland, they really are no different to tourists showing complete disrespect for an environment which they do not live in and do not rely on to survive. When I am walking through the bushland, I like to take time to listen, smell and feel what is actually going on around me...the patter in the leaves which sounds like light rain but is actually small bushland birds gleaning insects and lerps from the gum leaves, the warning calls of honeyeaters which means there is a raptor nearby, the quick movement on the forest floor of small lizards foraging amongst the leaf litter..all these things I notice. I try really hard not to be the tourist and to be accepted into the dynamics of what really goes on in our bushland. When no one is watching and no one is disturbing the locals, this is when you see things that are pretty amazing, creatures going about their business like you are a part of their world.

When a close friend recently asked me to spend her birthday with her bushwalking down at Loch Garry with our cameras, for a few hours we seemed detached from the rest of the world.

We had been following the busy activity of Weebills and Thornbills foraging through the trees and had just taken photos of a Treecreeper who decided to climb the trunk of a tree we were standing beside, when something caught our eye. Something small and quick, moving in jerky bursts around the base of a tree right in front of us. An Antechinus! A Yellow-footed Antechinus to be exact.

We were very careful and quiet, only moving closer each time he disappeared around the back of the tree out of sight until we dare not go nearer in the fear of scaring him away. The little fellow appeared just as curious of us as we were of him and allowed us to take photos for what seemed an eternity before disappearing in one flash of movement directly down a hollow in an adjoining cut stump at the base of the tree.

Yellow-footed Antechinus are a tiny marsupial, weighing in at around 30 grams and the size of a mouse. Sometimes they are called marsupial mice but their behaviour is quite different to that of an introduced house mouse.

They are quite active during the day, unlike other Antechinus species and feed on a wide variety of things. Insects, lizards, frogs, sap, nectar and even eggs can all make up a part of their diet. Breeding takes place for only 2 to 3 weeks in August here and during this time the males are so intent on finding females and breeding that they actually starve themselves, not eating, drinking or even sleeping, losing so much body weight and health due to lack of nutrition and exertion that they die shortly after. The females store the sperm of multiple males until the end of her breeding season when she ovulates, therefore her litter of young will have different fathers.

The female can give birth to around 7 to 10 young but only the ones who are able to latch on to one of their mother's nipples will survive, the ones who don't very quickly fall and perish. She has a rudimentary pouch and the young reside here while she forages for the first 5 weeks. When they get too heavy for her to carry, she places them in a nest. After about 3 months the young are weaned and shortly after the female may also die, although they have been recorded to living up to 3 years in captivity.

These tiny marsupials have declined in numbers in many areas. Leaf litter, fallen timber and hollows (including hollows in fallen timber), are all important factors in this little creature's survival. In some areas, they are more abundant in roadside habitat where there is more fallen timber as opposed to remnant bushland in paddocks which tends to get 'cleaned up' of fallen timber and leaf litter. Some land owners in this area also 'clean up' all fallen timber and leaf litter under the roadside trees in front of their properties into huge piles each year and burn it all! This behaviour is actually totally illegal and is contributing to the loss of remaining habitat for many species.

Cats and foxes also play a contributing role in the decline of this species. A real worry for the Yellow-footed Antechinus is the lack of connectivity to fragmented areas of suitable habitat and it is not actually known how this lack of being able to disperse into nearby areas is affecting genetic diversity.

In turn, when small marsupial species like Antechinus go missing from an area, so too do the native species who rely on them as prey, such as the Murray Darling Python who would certainly prey on Antechinus, particularly as young snakes.

I was delighted and excited to get some photos of this little fellow and it goes to show that it pays to go slow, listen, look and soak up your surroundings as you will surely notice the little things.