Flying Foxes, also called fruit bats, are large bats with grey and red fur. Their bodies are about the size of a kitten, and they look cute and cuddly. Then you add the claws that allow them to hang from trees and street lamps, and the large membranous black wings that allow them to fly at over 20 kilometres per hour, and you have a truly wondrous creature.

A colony of Flying Foxes roosts in a nature patch in Balgowlah, near Sydney. Patches of trees inhabited by these bats are called camps. I walked around the edges of the camp and took a few photos and videos.

While walking around the edges of the camp, I was careful not to get too close or to walk under any branches where bats were hanging. These bats aren’t aggressive but they do carry nasty diseases, so it pays to be wary. Evidently you won’t be infected by any diseases from the bats unless you come into close contact with one of them. Still, cuddly as they look, they’re wild creatures and deserve respect.

Here’s a closeup of one of the bats, neatly wrapped up in its own wings and hanging from a branch by its feet:

In the next photo, a bat decided to change position. Here it’s moving from the upside down roosting position to what we’d call the right way up:

Now the bat is hanging by its front feet, facing away from us, with its ears sticking out sideways:

The next video shows another area of the bat camp. As I was recording the video, there was a short series of bangs, probably from the nearby road. The noise disturbed the bats. They started chittering more loudly than ever, and a few of them took flight:

These are Grey-headed Flying Foxes, one of three types of Flying Foxes in the Sydney area. At dusk, we occasionally see large numbers of bats rising into the air and heading off to feed. They’re nocturnal, and they feed on flowers and fruit. With their large, strong wings, they can travel long distances.

The next video shows one of the animals coming in to land in a tree inhabited by the colony:

The next few pics zoom out to show the size of the colony:

Let’s end with a row of bats neatly lined up: