Grey headed flying foxes visited Bathurst in big numbers in 2010, and again last summer.

In 2010, they enjoyed their preferred accommodation style, in big trees along a river, in this case the Macquarie River near Eglinton. Evaporation from a river or creek helps keeps the animals cool in the heat of the day, and they like to drink by skimming the surface of the water and then licking their fur.

When they came back at the end of 2017, the willows they’d used last time were gone and they headed for the next best thing, Machattie Park.

Machattie Park, with its well-fed ducks and possums and human mothers tending babies in prams, might seem an ideal hotel for bats, but this is not the case. It’s a small area of trees and there’s no river to skim for water. It’s actually accommodation of last resort for desperate native animals who continue to lose habitat across the state.

We are so used to organising everything for our own convenience that we can feel startled and angry when other species attempt to fight back. Magpies swoop, masked lapwings (aka plovers) shriek and run at you, bats land in the trees in your park.

As the weather warms up, we’ll soon find out if the furry flying mammals have elected to return to the park. They might, or they might not. That’s the other thing about nature: it doesn’t care too much about human timetables and strategy meetings. It’s on its own (delightful) trip.

If deputy mayor Bobby Bourke had his way, we’d be blaring music and lights at any bats daring to return. But the female bats are likely to be pregnant or lactating, in which case it’s against state wildlife legislation to move them on. The other problem is that deterrence and dispersal strategies are both highly expensive and unlikely to work.

At last Wednesday’s council meeting, the bats were given a reprieve, with councillors finding that the costs and uncertainty of deterrence and dispersal schemes were too great. Instead, they voted to clean up after the bats and the plant new habitat for them along the Macquarie River.

Also last week, children from the Cathedral School were seen planting trees for flying foxes along the river. A new generation of humans is learning that we need to share this land with other species, not just take everything for ourselves.