canberrabirds

Bats

To: "'Leo Berzins'" <>, <>
Subject: Bats
From: "John Rawsthorne" <>
Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 01:16:28 +1100

Here in Forbes (central NSW, not really in COG territory at all) I regularly see one or two fruit bats each night over summer, presumably little red flying foxes.  However, last night I was astonished to see hundreds and hundreds… and hundreds, flying past at maybe 100m above ground level, heading northwest.  I only had a part-sky view from my verandah and only started taking notice after they had been going for a while, but estimated that I watched 6,000 fly past in a fifteen minute period in the last light of dusk.  I saw a few tonight doing a similar thing, but maybe only a couple of hundred in total.  Do these critters make mass migrations?

 

Cheers

John Rawsthorne

 


From: Leo Berzins [
Sent: Friday, 1 February 2008 10:19 PM
To:
Subject: [canberrabirds] Bats

 

Shortly before nine o'clock this evening (Friday), my partner Robyn and I  were sitting on the north facing verandah of our humble shack in west Queanbeyan enjoying a quiet glass of wine or  two (Pewsey Vale riesling and O'Leary Walker shiraz, if you must know) when our  attention was drawn skyward by the appearance of some large, silent ariborne creatures flying less than fifty metres above us in a south-easterly direction. They weren't in a close flock, but over the course of the next  five minutes or so, we would have seen at least thirty fly over our airspace. Locking onto one of them with my now ever-present binoculars, I glimpsed the distinctive silhouhette of bat wings. Sizewise, they looked larger than a currawong and probably closer to a raven (estimation in poor light).

 

It seems that is not a one-off sighting, as Robyn saw some similar airborne creatures at the same time yesterday evening flying in the same direction.

 

Our estimation of their flight path is that they were coming from the general direction fo Mount Ainslie.

 

Where were they heading? What species of bat were they? Are they temporarily locally resident like the Grey-headed Flying-foxes a couple of years ago at Regatta Point?

 

Any suggestions welcome.

 

Regards,

Leo.

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