Thursday, June 22, 2006

trying to work out where the sun is...

botanic bats

I heard there was a bat colony in Melbourne's botanic gardens.
They call them flying foxes here, or fruit bats.



click here to enlarge


I walked and walked looking up in trees to see if I could see them....






click here to enlarge

eventually I asked and found out that they used to live in fern gully, a dense crop of trees in the centre of the gardens, but that there were so many of them they were damaging the plantlife.
So the colony was 'relocated' to the Yarra Bend golf course.
I asked how they were able to relocate them, and was told that they had played sounds that they knew the bats wouldn't like in the botanic gardens, and sounds of happy bats on the golf course.
I later visit the golf course to see for myself....

bat heaven
batmen
strange fruit
flying foxes fired at by fruit firearm