Bats with wings, do your thing

Glad to see you’ve awoken from the hypoglycaemic coma into which you slipped upon viewing photography from the hands of your idol, me.

Well, dial 999, cos here comes some more images captured by my most singular hand.

The subject this time is nothing so evasive as the common garden pancake, but the much more placid fruit bat. Yes, those black cocoons hanging from the trees are not incredibly rotten apples nor some form of shiny metapod, as I first decried, but hundreds and hundreds of flying foxes! My friend John, of penguin fame, drove me down to visit the colony in Yarra Bend Park and even played tour guide, pointing out the various fragrant plants and filling in the rather large gaps in my knowledge about fruit bats (did you know they can swim?) I also got to learn some more unusual facts about the bats from reading the signs- for example, that smell that pervades the bat cave in Chester zoo is not their faeces, but their pheromones, so if you don’t mind it, you may well be a zoophile. Also, it conserves more energy to sleep hanging upside down than to defy gravity and stand up- who knew, right? Anyway, long story short, there were hundreds and hundreds of bats, swarming the trees like gremlins on a plane wing, not moving and perfectly visible in broad daylight, and these were the best I could get for you:

I tried shouting 'use harden' to no avail.

Note the harbinger of death or 'poison apple' look.

A bat in the hand is worth two in the bush. 

Something witty.

And please gawk in disbelief at a video I shot of bat in flight.

Allow me to reiterate: I fuckin' love Australia.