Bat frenzy a unique sight

Each evening between 7:30pm and 7:45pm the sky down by the river fills with screeches and blackens with a frenzy of wings as at least 74,000 fruit bats, or grey-headed flying foxes, awaken and head off on their nightly prowl.

Official counts were held on Wednesday and Thursday nights by 23 volunteers who conservatively counted 74,000 of the winged creatures.

The count was a massive undertaking, organisers Helen Bergen and Ray Mjadwesch said.

"We had a lady down who has done a lot with bats," Mr Mjadwesch said. "You can't actually count them all while they're in the trees it was more an estimate. We had 23 volunteers over the last two nights in Bathurst and split everyone into teams of two.

"Everyone had a section of sky and were given clickers. We said to them you can count in 10s or 50s or 5s, just don't change. Everyone was pressing their buttons fairly frequently.

"They were just streaming past. There could be up to 80,000 because the column I was looking at was going behind me too.

"It is pretty mind-boggling. This is nature going BANG! I walked through and wished David Attenborough was there."

Mr Mjadwesch said the massive numbers of bats were quite rare to see in Bathurst, but they could become a more frequent occurrence. "It happened two years ago but that was an anomaly," he said.

"This might become more usual and might become more frequent now that the climate is changing. People need to be prepared that this might be something on our calendar.

"All big migrations of animals people like to see. I think people would like to go down there and be blown away by it. I don't know how long people are going to stick around. If people go down they should stay along the bike trail. People need to know they are wild animals and will bite you if they are cornered."

He said to contact WIRES on 6331 1066 if anyone has any trouble with the animals in their backyards.