Bats and Darter-Swan interface

[martin butterfield <>]

Deciding that a queue with >600 people in it to get into the exhibition at the NGA was a little rugged I went for a walk around Central Basin this morning.  

The first stop was between the two cafes in front of the waterfront were a Darterwas strutting its stuff to a small flock (not counted) of Silver Gulls,  As a pair (sorry, I don't know that they had a relationship so change that to 'two') of Black Swans passed one of them attempted to strike with its beak at the Darter.  The latter struck back quite viciously but niether made contact.  This does suggest that if President Obama does eventually make to it Canberra he'd better leave those pussycat Bald Eagles at home or the local fowl will have them for lunch.

Moving around to the off-ramp from Commonwealth Bridge I could clearly hear the bats as soon as I got to Lake level.  Using Google Earth, I estimate this to be 400m range.  On getting to the colony I counted a reasonably clear treefull and came up with 50 bats hanging from it. I then counted the number of sub-colonies of this size in the trees arriving at 30.  Thus my estimate of the numbers is approximately 1500.  Since some of the foliage was rather dense I believe my count to be conservative.

I also called in at Aspen Island but no Pied Cormorants were visible.

Martin

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 1:09 PM, Geoffrey Dabb <> wrote:

Bats in Cth Park compared to John Gould’s lithograph of the ‘Grey-headed Vampire’ (made before there was a Cth Park and when people still believed in vampires)