Its no secret the most Princesses love animals the common image of a Fairy tale Princess is surrounded by songbirds or woodland creatures. In many stories animal friends offer help to maidens in trouble and sometimes they grant wishes too! Where I grew up we were surrounded by forest and so I spent much of my childhood around wild animals. At the Kings palace there are so many birds from little finches and honey eaters to a whole family of kookaburras and several packs of magpies. Sometimes there are bobtails and large monitor lizards that come out to sun themselves on a rock. I used to get up very early to walk down to the forest and see the kangaroos grazing and once we even had a wild fox who came to visit.

Where I live now there is less wildlife, but we still have a lot of birds in our garden. Turtledoves and magpie larks and tiny willy-wag-tails. Sometimes I see little geckos and skinks too. I like to take a walk down by the river where I can see beautiful waterbirds, lacey feathered egrets, long beaked ibis and spoonbills, pelicans and elegant black swans like this one.

Here are a few links that might be interesting to animal-loving Princesses.

Hand Feeding Wild Birds
An interesting article on gaining the trust of wild birds during winter and having them eat out of your hands! We used to have the kookaburras and magpies take food from our hands at the King’s place, but here the birds are more timid. Perhaps I will put up a feeder this winter, as I have been meaning to do so for some time.

Chickadees, Juncos, and Jays Oh My!
The blog of a californian bird watcher, most of these photos come from her own back yard! Great tips on attracting birds to your garden aswell.

Behind the Bins
Another beautiful bird blog, great photos and information on local birds. This one is from New Jersey.

Beginning Birding
Some excellent tips on how to start out bird watching, I was given a beautiful field guide for christmas by my Father and I can definitely say they come in handy!

Wildlife Gardener
A fantastic site about attracting wildlife in to your garden, everything from what plants to grow, how to set up boxes and homes and attracting everything from frogs to butterflies and small mammals. The site is british, but some tips will be helpful no matter where you live. I certainly envy those who can have hedgehogs in their gardens though!

Injured Wildlife
I know we all like to help animals in need, but sometimes we can do more harm than good if we don’t know how to handle them. This site has some great information on what to do if you come across and injured animal. We rescued an owl once, he flew in to the carriage at night and taking care of him was one of the most rewarding experiences I can remember. When we released him back in to the forest we were greeted by a dozen different owls on the way home, almost as if they were saying thank you!

Cute Overload
Of course I couldn’t do this carousel without mentioning Cute Overload. If you haven’t heard of it already its a blog devoted to posting adorable photos of animals, it can be a lovely way to cheer yourself up on a bad day (all though there can be an overload of bad english sometimes as well, I just look at the pictures.)