Ecologists have learnt quite a bit about flying foxes over the last 12 months.

Probably most of these bats have flown around 5000 kilometres since their last visit to Bathurst. It's very unlikely that it is the same one hundred who were here last year or the year before.

And next week while the numbers may stay roughly the same, some will have flown elsewhere and new ones will have come in, some visiting Bathurst for the first time.

These roosting colonies are very dynamic.

One grey-headed Flying-fox has amazed scientists by flying over 12,000 km in one year, and when in flight averaging around 40km an hour.

How do we know that?

Around 200 flying foxes were fitted with radio tracking devices and have been continuously tracked by satellite over the past five years - pretty nifty.

There has been a little bit of damage to the top branches of one particular tree in Machattie Park but on the whole there has been surprisingly little.

Mostly Bathurst people have been very tolerant about their presence in a park they love.

Flying-foxes are nomadic by nature but that doesn't mean to say their behaviour is without rhyme or reason - we just don't know enough about them.

But we do know that increasingly such mobile animals are coming into conflict with human populations as we destroy their habitat or because of global warming.

They are almost impossible to relocate once they decide on a roost location - just ask one of our councillors who a few years ago knew how to get rid of the bats and started up a motor engine early in the morning right under a major roost site. Oops!

Why Machattie Park?

Up to three species of bats used to roost in willows along the Macquarie River.

Greening Bathurst wrote to Bathurst Regional Council advising them to not remove this particular group of willows because there were likely to be unintended consequences. The rest is history.