So there I was one evening in mid-May, taking the breeze out back. For quite a few weeks I’d been spotting the Boobook owl – silent wings silhouetted against the clouds – as she headed for her favourite perch. This night I was aware of a bit of noise going on out the back, and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I saw one – no, two, no, three – shapes taking off from the stringybark tree and doing circuits over the house roof. I went back inside, thinking the owl[s] were teaching a fledgling to hunt, but came to realise this was something different. These silhouettes were of a different shape entirely, and there was a constant chattering and squeaking going on.
There was action afoot in the stringybark, and it was a troop of Grey Headed Flying Fox (Pteropus poliocephalus), who have established a colony in Adelaide, perhaps 1000 kilometres outside of their customary east coast range. They’ve been here nearly a decade, I think, and are something of a pest when they descend on one point to roost. I like to think half a dozen or so constitutes a friendly invasion, and when I did some research discovered they’ve been spotted in 20 or more locations across the eastern suburbs here, feeding on the gumnuts as they flowered and opened.
You could call it the Season of the White Carpet, since the discarded gumnut calyx’ form a crunchy and uneven carpet under the tree, so many did they strip in their feeding. The bats returned each evening for nearly a month, and I never did manage to get a photo of them. They’re shy, easily disturbed, and careful about avoiding contact. On the other hand, they’re fairly large, with a wingspan of up to a metre, quite loud, and unlike any other active night-time creatures.
Here’s all the information on them you could possibly need.