Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Like a Bat Outta H-E-Double Hockey Sticks

Over the past few months, I've been mentioning wave after wave of scourge to come visit the friendly confines of Sydney's city limits. First, we experienced the cockroaches, then the flies, then the Begong moths. I surmised, what could possibly be next?


Bats. An enormous amount of bats.

They reside in the parkland adjacent to the Opera House, right on the edge of the water. Frank and Chana went down to investigate and took this ominous photo. No caves or hidden dwellings for these guys, they just sleep out in the open, taking over the trees with their upside down ways.

Come dusk, the skies fill with tens of thousands of bats, all flying in a circular pattern between the city center and about 5 kilometers South / South East, close to where we reside. You look up and just see these huge streams of bats commuting to their nightly bug-munching. They're loud as well, screetching their bat calls at one another from overhead.

It isn't like the movies where the bats swoop down on people, biting their necks and getting caught in peoples hair. They're generally non-confrontational, that is unless you are a fly or a mosquito or something edible to them. But it is just such an ominous presence to see, like something out of Ghostbusters - as if the demons of hades hath awoken this fateful night.

Peggy has been leaving sunflower seeds out for the lorikeets to eat on our windowsill. One of these evenings I expect to see the sons and daughters of Elvira munching away, giving everyone a good rise.

Nature works on a much bigger scale here, you feel as if humanity has interrupted this gigantic eco-system at work. I am not sure if we've just killed off any non-human species in California, but there seems to be more 'activity' going on in the animal kingdom, even within the cities. Out in the country, as Peggy pointed out in her Tassie post, the wildlife is just teeming.

posted by ncawthon at 3:49 PM