A wallaby was seen hopping around a garden in Devon on Thursday, thousands of kilometers from its native home in Tasmania.
The unusual animal was seen wandering around Clayhidon in the Blackdown Hills, near the border with Somerset.
The gray marsupial was filmed galloping through the garden and stopping for a moment before continuing on its way. BBC Devon reported.
It comes after a wallaby was spotted in countryside in the village of Whitestone, near Exeter.
Paul Peters and his daughter spotted one near their home in July this year.
A wallaby was seen hopping around a garden in Devon on Thursday
A wallaby in Australia. The animals may have escaped from private collections in the UK or been deliberately released.
The sighting of the rare marsupial is the latest in a series in Devon and Cornwall.
he said DevonLive: ‘I’ve already seen it twice. I was surprised when I first saw him in the field. You just don’t expect to see something like that.’
In March, a wallaby was captured leaping across a road in Crediton in a clip that was sent to documentary filmmaker Tim Whittard, who researches out-of-place animals.
Whittard said the UK had seen an increase in reports of the red-necked species in recent years.
He said: ‘I am not at all surprised by the sighting, the presence of red-necked kangaroos in the UK has been well reported in recent years, and it is clear that we have a small breeding population of them here in Britain.’
Red-necked wallabies, native to Tasmania, are believed to have escaped from private collections or even been deliberately released into the wild.
Similar in appearance to kangaroos but much smaller in size, they have grayish-brown fur.
They are believed to be solitary animals and are most active at night or early in the day.
The wallaby was spotted on the side of the road near Crediton, south Devon. The marsupial is more than 16,000 kilometers from its home in Tasmania.
Another sighting of the rare marsupial was recorded in the village of Hemyock in Devon in December 2020, where one was seen wandering along a country lane.
He was filmed running in front of a car on the road before running out of danger into the bushes.
Grace Brook and her twin sister Beth, who had lived in the village all their lives, saw what they first thought was a kangaroo while driving along the road.
Another wallaby was reported to have roamed Cornwall in 2017 and was sighted in several locations including the Cornish villages of Launceston, Lerryn and Lostwithiel.
Despite being reported to the RSPCA, the marsupial appeared to evade animal keepers while traveling between neighbourhoods.