Every night just when it’s starting to get dark, thousands of bats fly over our house. In the summer, we sit outside some evenings and watch them from our terrace. They’re flying foxes, which are fruit bats, and a lot of times they fly really low, close to the rooftops.
We always wondered where they were coming from until one day someone mentioned to us that they slept (during the day) in a grove of trees at the park. The park is about a 15-minute walk away so we investigated. Can you see them dangling?
It was true, tree after tree was brimming with bats. We’d also heard that people go to watch them take off at night so we put that on our Sydney bucket list. The problem with that is that we’d never remember to go until it was too late and they were already flying over our house. But, finally, the other weekend, we planned ahead and made it to the park just before dusk. And we waited.
And we waited….
And we wondered if standing under them was a good idea because, you know, guano and all. It was cool to watch them wake up and wriggle their wings and make little noises. A few seemed nestled together and Nicola and I decided they were cuddling. And I realized that if you had asked me 5 years ago if I wanted to watch bats wake up and fly away I would have looked at you kinda funny.
Then the great migration happened.
It was worth the wait!
The feature photo is from our walk home. After about 20 minutes, it was so dark that we could hardly see, so we thought it would be a good idea to start walking out of the park. (The park is HUGE, like Central Park in NYC.) The bats were still going strong, though.
Oddly enough, I’ve written a piece on bats. So if you’re curious about them, check this out.