Fruit Bats!

Flying foxes are large fruit bats that spend the day high in the treetops safe from carpet pythons and other predators. They are a unique mix of adorable and terrifying. Look at that sweet face!

🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇

They are one of the four animals I really wanted to see in Australia. My first stop in Sydney was to Centennial Park, home to a colony of flying foxes. 

Gray-headed flying foxes are the largest bats in Australia. I found them on two overcast, rainy days in the Sydney suburbs. The colonies are loud and raucous. Flying foxes love to quarrel with each other.

Bats curl up under their wings during a rainstorm. 

Flying foxes are called fruit bats, but their primary food is flower nectar. They are a reliable pollinator of plants in Australia. When they do eat fruit, they'll often chew it up to extract the tasty juice and spit out the pulp, ha.

They feed on flowers each night in a 20-mile radius around their colonies before returning to sleep away the day high in the trees. They are light sleepers and often get restless when their quarrelsome neighbors get too annoying. Watching them fly around the lake at Parramatta Park was so much fun.

Spectacled flying foxes in Yungaburra are among Australia's four species of fruit bat. They are especially sensitive to high temperatures and can succumb to heat stress.

Bats sometimes tear their wings on thorns or barbed wire. But their webbed skin heals fast.

Unlike small bats that have frenetic wingbeats, flying foxes are graceful in the air. 

These bats have a novel way of landing. They fly over branches and snag them with their meat-hook claws and pendulum upside-down in one fluid motion.

A gray-headed flying fox flies an orbit around his favorite perch after being disturbed by quarrelsome neighbors. 

Spectacled flying foxes perch in trees over Yungaburra Creek. 

These sweet little flying foxes are harmless to people. And while their loud chattering is a little overwhelming, most Australians seem to love them. I was totally charmed by them.