Skip to main content

The bats are back in town

Black flying-foxes, Herston.

 During a bird survey at Rasey Park on the weekend, I found a colony of black-flying foxes (Pteropus alecto) in the mangroves lining Breakfast Creek.

 The sight was a relief: earlier last month, the Brisbane Times reported on the mysterious disappearance of South-east Queensland’s flying-foxes, as observed by Gold Coast bat expert, Trish Wimberley. 

The news had triggered alarm in me—suddenly I couldn’t recall having seen any bats for at least a few weeks, an unusual occurrence for anyone living within the Norman Creek catchment area.

 A walk with the spotlight through Dawn Road Reserve in mid-June didn’t allay my worries either, as not a single flying-fox was seen or heard.

 Where were they?

 It seems this year that the flying-foxes are having to chase food supplies a little harder than usual, and the nomadic grey-headed (P. poliocephalus) and little red flying-foxes (P. scapulatus) have sought nourishment further south where the eucalypt blooming season has already commenced.

 The black flying-fox is considered more of a sedentary species however, travelling distances each night of around 15 to 30km away from its roosting camp; that there also seems to be very few of these presently in South-east Queensland is therefore notable.

 Flying-foxes are very susceptible to heat stress thanks to their lean bodies, large surface area and exposed roosting sites; with the twelve months between July 2015 and June 2016 being the warmest on record for Australia, it is possible that our bats have had a very poor breeding season.

 Now that the forest red gums (Eucalyptus tereticornis), tallowwoods (E. microcorys) and various ironbarks are coming into flower, it will be interesting to see if flying-fox numbers perk up in the local area.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Margaret Birding For Pleasure11 July 2016 at 20:09

    I do hope the BAt numbered will increase and be back in force.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christian Perrin18 July 2016 at 08:17

      Thanks Margaret, they are important pollinators of our forests, so I hope so too!

      Delete
  2. olliescully1@gmail.com18 July 2016 at 09:13

    Black flying foxes are awesome bats, one of my favourite! I have found that they are common up here in Caloundra, but their numbers can be quite variable. shame to see them in such low numbers in Brisbane!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Christian Perrin18 July 2016 at 20:40

      I think I am more partial to the grey-headeds, probably just because my encounters with them have been fewer and therefore more memorable! Hopefully the low numbers at present mostly reflects seasonal variability, so will keep an eye out on the fly outs :)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Suburb Guide: Lawnton

Fan-tailed cuckoos are most often seen on a low branch, keeping an eye-out for caterpillars below. Straddling the lush banks of the North Pine River, Lawnton is a suburb of Moreton Bay Regional Council steeped in history . Originally inhabited by the Turrbal people, the land would have been cloaked for many hundreds of thousands of years by a lowland rainforest ecosystem, featuring the hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii) for which the river is named after. Unfortunately, the rich soils allowing the vegetation to thrive also made the place attractive to European settlers that wished to farm the land, leading to great conflict with the Indigenous inhabitants. This was eased temporarily by local pioneering figure Tom Petrie, who had lived with and forged a respectful relationship with the Turrbal people, including Dalaipi, leader of the North Pine tribe. By 1858, however, the Aboriginal people of the area were removed and sent to live in isolated reserves around South-east Queenslan
6 comments
Read more

Tadpoles of South-eastern Australia: A Guide With Keys

Book review Reed New Holland Publishing, 2002. It’s noon on a warm autumn day and I am driving south along Beaudesert Road towards the peripheral suburbs of Brisbane’s southside that remain largely a mystery to me. I have decided that not knowing the amphibian fauna inhabiting the suburb of Algester is a personal error that I simply must rectify. My favourite way to search for frogs is to go spotlighting on humid spring and summer nights, but I have left it a little late this year and doubt my chances at finding them now that the evenings have mercifully turned cooler. Instead, I am going to survey the local amphibian population in a way that is quite new to me, aided by a secret weapon sitting in the passenger seat next to me: Marion Anstis’s book, Tadpoles of South-eastern Australia: A Guide With Keys .
4 comments
Read more

Wild Plants of Ipswich

I've never really taken much notice of plants until recently, regarding them usually as just the thing that a bird perches on while you're watching it. This week I decided it was time to change that attitude by trying my hand at plant identification in Denmark Hill Conservation Park, located in the centre of Ipswich. The park is just 11.5 hectares in size, but preserves a patch of bushland that acts as an 'island refuge' in a sea of suburbia. I did my best to focus on the trees and not be too distracted by birds or the resident Koala   (Phascolarctos cinereus)  population, and came up with nine interesting trees and plants seen on the Water Tower Circuit.
12 comments
Read more