Posted January 26, 2023 about August 21, 2022
When we first arrived here and walked through the park, I was encouraged to find a sign describing the area’s flying foxes. As a big fan of these bats, I’d hoped to see them at some point but didn’t know if they’d be in Gladstone. The sign confirmed that fruit bats do visit this area, but unfortunately black flying fox season had ended, and sightings of the little red flying foxes would depend on food availability. Seeing bats in this park would be far from a sure thing.
We’d looked for bats at sunset but didn’t see any. I figured they probably weren’t here at this point. Then one morning someone on the shuttle bus remarked about seeing bats, saying, “The sky was black with them last evening!” It was? I’d looked out at sunset but certainly didn’t see any sky blackened by fruit bats.
Then one evening, visiting our friends on Nomad, they said, “Look at all the bats!” The sun had set but the last of the dusk-light lingered, but still I couldn’t see any bats. Our friends pointed towards a shadowy area of the sky, and when I looked harder, I realized the dark area was filled with bats, probably hundreds of them, flying towards the main harbor and outer barrier islands.
Rich and I were curious to see if there were any bats in the park, so the next evening we went to look for them. We now realized that in this area, sunset was not the best time for bat sightings as they seemed to prefer the cover of near-darkness. So we set out at dusk and were rewarded with the sighting of a single bat, followed soon by more bats, as the last of the light disappeared.
These bats made a beeline for a particular tree, gracefully swooping around us, landing amid the branches and hanging upside down to enjoy whatever bat delicacies the tree had to offer. Despite being called “little red flying foxes,” they seemed pretty big, and being in their presence evoked a sense of wonder and awe that stayed with us even after we were back on the Legacy. –Cyndi
