the bats of sydney – living xxxl, a year in retrospect

For the next few weeks I’m going back through photos from the last year. So often I snap shots and forget to give them context.  While I’m taken by their beauty at the moment, the moment itself is what really calls the most attention. It’s not until I thumb back through my images, that I realize these moments, now only in my memories, have led me to this exact point in my life.

As I go through this last year, one thing is certain: I’d do it all again, if I didn’t have so much more to see.

While Australian Mardia Gras was amazing, what really captured my imagination were the bats. Every night at dusk they fill the sky.

To learn more about the Bats of Sydney and efforts to rescue them, you can visit: http://www.sydneybats.org.au/

More information from the Sydney Bats site:

• The grey-headed flying-fox, the most commonly-seen bat in the Sydney region, is a large nectar- and fruit-eating bat which roosts during the day in large treetop colonies. It’s listed as a threatened species (vulnerable to extinction) at state, federal, and international levels. Numbers are declining – from many millions in the 1930′s to less than 450,000 in 2004, with an estimated 30% decline in population between 1990 and 2000. A population study (Divljam 2008) suggests the grey-headed flying-fox will be extinct in the wild in around 80-85 years.
• Around 19 species of insect-eating microbats are also found in the Sydney Region.