bats row

Can bats swim?
Yes, they row themselves with their wings. Bats do not go swimming by choice.

"We are hoping that they turn out to be the penguins of Melbourne,"The age

Last night at dusk on that balmy night I watched thousands of bats flying overhead from their colony situated between two boathouses on the Yarra (and yet they can row themselves). It was a magnificent sight, thousands and thousands of them, and I half-imagined I was an international grey-headed flying tourist.

And I woke to the local headline same Bat plan to lure tourists...

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Comments: bats row

When I was a kid I used to enjoy clapping my hands at bats flying overhead and watching them veer away from the sound. Now that I've grown up and realise that life is stressful enough for us all I wouldn't now do this - well not much anyway.
Posted by Link at February 15, 2005 05:35 PM

I wouldn't do that - from fear as much as respect ;)
I could see them veering around the Freeway lights, and others bumping into each other and correcting their course like racehorses. They were kind of low and slow enough to observe like this, so I maybe I could see the tourist potential.
Posted by boynton at February 15, 2005 07:21 PM

Yer damn tootin' those winged wonders have got tourism potential. Visiting OS friends, especially from the States, are always blown away by the flocks flapping by, the sunset flickering through their wings.

And, as our family briefly hosted a young fruit bat (we called him "Turbo") after he fell out of our mango tree on his head, I can say they have heaps more personality than penguins. Also they taste delicious. Well not Turbo, he flew away eventually, but the ones served up in Tonga with sweet potatoes did.

And this is my alltime favourite Melbourne bat story.

http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupPrintArticle.pl?path=/articles/2003/10/31/1067566088343.html

"...after an eight-month chase around the city's parks, a crematorium, exclusive riverfront properties, a girls' school and golf courses."

""I'm on record as being a bat-move sceptic,"

"wishhhhissht"

There's a little animated movie in this surely - especially from the bats POV.
Posted by Nabakov at February 17, 2005 10:38 PM

Yes and could the tourists do a NGV-Leonard-French-ceiling thing of lying down on grass to best observe world-class tourism attraction horizontally?

That article is a gem - wonder who wrote it. As you observed:
"I'm on record as being a... sceptic," says... Pope"

"every dawn, dispersal agents met the bats as they flew in to "bounce them back to Hawthorn".

I was thinking of having
"We are hoping that they turn out to be the penguins of Melbourne," as the new description for this blog - but "Some went as far as Ripponlea" is
a strong contender.

"One man has a "woo-woo" type of hiss"

My neighbour had a woo-woo type of hiss calling her cat. Actually- more a "shwee-shwee-shwee" type of hiss. Doug (my dog) and I used to think it was slightly ridiculous.
Posted by boynton at February 17, 2005 11:43 PM