I took this one today, while walking in the botannical garden near the Opera House. These are no fruit, they are bats taking a siesta! I was planning to sit under the tree and listen to an audiobook about vampires I’m currently enjoying (I Am Legend), but it was too hot and the bats were too creepy. Also, Damian has told me scary stories of snakes dropping on people from trees here. I remember him saying to me very seriously a while ago: “Don’t EVER walk under a tree in Australia!”
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January 24th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
It is the Sydney Zoo on a island, isn’t it ?
It’s a great place to visit.
If you’re scared about snakes, watch out spiders : 2 species are dangerous in Australia ; the Sydney Funnel Web and the Redback (who is usually behind the toilets !!).
January 24th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
So, technically those are flying foxes and more than a little evidence suggests that they may be closer to primates than they are other bats… evolutionarily speaking. Pretty wild, eh?
January 24th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
This is about how many bats I need to get rid of the mosquitos here, July-September.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Wow! That’s crazy…We have tons of bats in Austin, but they hang out under bridges here. It’s quite a spectacle to watch them come out at dusk. they have tours for people to go watch. But just in the tress in the daylight, creepy!
January 24th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
In Saudi Arabia I used to ride my bike out into the desert listening to my walkman (listening to the Cure most likely) and pass by a street light where bats were feeding on the bugs attracted by the light. I had a short in one side of my headphones and as I approached the swarming bats I could hear strange sharp noises being picked on the shorted earpiece. The noises would dissappear as I left the bats. No one would believe me that my little walkman was picking up ultrasonic frequencies. I didn’t think about them till this blog entry. This site that talks about the Australian bat population and bat frequency detectors among other things makes me think my walkman/bat detector was possible:
http://www.openobject.org/objectsinflux/?p=16
January 25th, 2008 at 12:06 am
oh, speaking as an aussie concerned for your welfare - has anyone told you about ‘drop-bears’ yet?
i hope bjork is feeling better and that her voice recovers in time for the melbourne gig day out. in the meantime, enjoy the sunshine - this weekend should be a typical melbourne one, you’ll probably get all four seasons over the course of it!
January 25th, 2008 at 5:46 am
Oh, that Richard Matheson - what a man! If memory serves at all, I believe “I Am Legend” was originally brought to the screen in the beautiful, classic B-movie “The Last Man on Earth,” starring Vincent Price. And though there is much to envy, I’m happy to be at home in -25F weather when compared to Australia’s falling snakes, spiders, bats, and other horrors listed here.
Keep Safe and Warm - Elliot L
January 25th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Fine dining - while here and you feel like spoiling yourself go check out tetsuya and go the full wine course & food. Also matt moran @ aria or check out Pier resturant. Great seafood. Enjoy!!
January 25th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Hahaha! Never walk under a tree in Australia? I think that’s quite an over-statement. First off, it’s often hard to avoid walking under trees. If a snake WAS to jump on you from up one, it would be somewhere in the outback, not in central Sydney! (Sounds like Damian was either tricking you or has been tricked himself.)
And as creepy as the bats may seem, they’re no harm at all. Sydney’s over population of them in the Gardens have been somewhat of a problem. They’ve tried to advertise the bats as a sort of tourist attraction, but in the end they’re loud, smelly and not the most comforting of creatures.
Though they make for an excellent visual piece when at a huge concert in the Opera House forecourt.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Oh, that Richard Matheson - what a Man! If memory serves at all,
“I Am Legend” was originally adapted to the screen in the beautiful,
B-movie classic “The Last Man on Earth,” starring Vincent Price. And
though there is much to envy, I am quite comfortably living out my days
in the -25F weather of Wisconsin, away from the troublesome worries of
falling snakes, spiders, bats, and other horrors mentioned in this blog.
Keep Safe and Warm! - Elliot L
January 27th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
na na na na na na na na
na na na na na na na na
BAT-TREE!
January 27th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I heard that the first version of her song “cover me” was recorded in a cave with tons of bats. She had a microphone with a long cord, and she was just walking in the dark cave, full of bats, singing “while I crawl into the unknown, cover me” …maybe that gives you new perspective. I don’t think she’d be afraid of a bunch of bats hanging from the tree, so neither should you.
I personally LOVE bats. They’re so cute. Their ears are the best. They’ve got these HUGE ears, and they don’t even need their eyes, because their ears are so great they can see with their ears. …which could also remind me of Dancer in the Dark…
My 84 year old landlady’s pretty well off, and she’s going to leave all her money to the organizations which are in place to protect the polar bears, the whales, the frogs, the wolves, the tigers, the gorillas, the elephants, and the bats. Forget the people.
Sometimes she gets these cute stamps in the mail with pictures of bats. They are sort of freakish looking, but adorable in the same breath. …those ears.
you know what the French word for them is? chauve souris (literally “bald mouse.”) don’t ask me why.
At Tahoe in the summer, there are bats at dusk, just flying over the meadow, near the campgrounds, catching bugs. I love the way they swoop. Sort of reminds me of swallows, but it’s neat to look closely and see that it’s not a bird, it’s a bat.
I don’t even think vampire bats exist.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
nice Billie Holiday reference with the “strange fruit” quote.