Bats: the big bug scourge of the skies
Hee. (Note the professional clear binder)
So – I spent about an hour at the pixar exhibit, which was really cool. It was a ton of original artwork, including really incredible paintings, sculptures, and sketches. Very interesting.
Then I got the train to go to Yarra Bend Park, which is a bit outside of the city. The Yarra river runs through it, and its a mix of golf course, planted area, and bushland. After eating in a cafe on the river, watching coots fighting, and chatting with my mom, I walked around to the other side of the park. Saw a kookaburra, and several other types of birds. I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t find the flying foxes, because I wasn’t seeing any in the trees (like when I walked through Madagascar rainforest for an hour without seeing a lemur in my first park).
I needn’t have worried. There weren’t hundreds. There were thousands. The colony peaked at 30,000 in the summer of 2003, before they were relocated from the royal botanical gardens to Yarra Bend. They covered the trees lining the river. Each tree had between 30-100 bats hanging like fruit. It was astounding. They’re grey-headed flying foxes, which are threatened. They are pretty large and a few flew quite close to me. They’re also pretty noisy. I sat and read for a while by the river, thinking I would stay to watch them fly off at dusk (I’ve always wanted to go to Austin to see the bat colony fly there), but after a while my fingers were going numb again, so I started to walk back, which was a good idea because after a couple km I was finally reaching suburbia as the streetlights were going on. Back in the city – watching some daily show, listening to some Tori, and then grabbing some dinner. Tomorrow; penguins and such!
Oh – it reminded me, I had asked a wildlife manager if there were any (native) non-marsupial mammals in Oz and she had said Dingos, but bats count too! 🙂
Tags: Travel
jwdmeow
Listen, you chowderheads, who’s giving this report? 😉
Everyone knows that the clear plastic binder makes all the difference! You clearly (ouch) deserve an “A”!
But how endangered can they be if there are 30,000 of them? Seems like a lot…
Well, I don’t know that they still have 30,000. And they’re threatened, not endangered. It might not be that many, if its one of the only colonies. Status also depends on their population stats, like reproduction rates and ages, so that might play a factor.