The Wandering Tattler

Today was again comfortably warm and mostly sunny. We walked across the Harbor Bridge this morning and then back past Circular Quay into the Royal Botanical Garden. Here Lynn visited Government House while I searched for flying foxes. One of my goals in visiting Australia was to see these immense bats, and I’d read that a growing colony had settled into residence in the trees of the Botanical Garden near a Wollemi Pine tree that was planted there a few years ago (this species, long thought to have been extinct, was rediscovered in a remote canyon in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney in 1994). As I walked about, full of purpose but lacking clues to direct my search, I eventually began to hear what sounded like an immense and cacophonous aviary. I walked toward the pandemonium and was soon rewarded by one of my most memorable wildlife sightings and a vista most bizarre and wonderful. The sounds were produced by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of large bats, hanging in dense groups from the tops of many trees. These bats, Gray-headed Flying Foxes, have 3- to 4-foot-long black wings and large cinnamon-colored bodies. They hang by day in the treetops, grooming and pestering each other, and their chattering reaches deafening levels, In the evenings they fly out to feed on fruits and nectar. They not only are much larger than the microchiropteran insect-eating, sonar-producing bats familiar to North Americana, they also possess less grotesque, more appealing mammalian faces. Indeed, they do look like upside-down foxes with Dracula wings.

After lunch we took the bus to Sydney Tower, the second tallest structure in the southern hemisphere. The views from the round observatory at the top are stunning. From here one can see how complex and convoluted Sydney Harbor is, and we could see its opening to the sea. To the south we could see Botany Bay, site of Captain Cook’s landing, and the Olympic stadium, and in the hazy western horizon, the Blue Mountains. From the tower we walked to the immense and ornate Queen Victoria Building and browsed the upscale shops in this historic emporium. Afterwards we ate dinner in Chinatown (finding no soap in the men’s room, I wondered if it had been a mistake to eat there) and took a bus back to Circulalr Quay, where large numbers of people were still strolling among the UNICEF bears, listening to a one-man steel band, an aged Chinese musician playing a traditional instrument, and a young folk singer. The large passenger liner that docked there yesterday (The Seabourn) was still there