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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

Bats and Songs [PhotoTravel]

Last two photographs from Australia today. The Sydney Botanical gardens have a big problem with flying foxes (fruit bats). These aren't the tiny bat-lets you find in your garden - these are substantial mammals with big black wings. As you'll see on the left, they may be an endangered species in Australia but they are locally common in the priceless tree collection in the Gardens and all 3500 of them spend happy days in the sun defoliating the trees. So what do you do if you are the curator of the tree collection? Well, nothing really. They usually try scaring the bats away with bat-hostile noises (not at the moment though as it's the breeding season) but as the bats have a straight choice of lush exotic trees or skyscrapers I can't really see that working.
I spent my last evening in Sydney experimenting with long-exposure photographs of the Sydney Opera House. This visit I was lucky enough to actually attend a concert of modern music there (Sun Australia is a long-time sponsor of the arts, to the extent of commissioning a pretty good piece of music to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the company this year, and is a sponsor of the 'Musica Viva' commissioning organisation) and I must say it is a splendid building. The photo to the right was taken just after sunset.

posted at 9:04 AM (UK) | |