Bat Spotting and other pleasures

 

When we were living in Australia, we started bat spotting as a regular evening practice. Our first experience with them was when we were biking home from a movie at dusk. We lived in downtown Melbourne, so is not a rural setting. We were lucky enough to rent a very urban garage that was right on the Royal Park, analogous to Central Park in New York City. 

As we were coming through an open area in the park, we saw what looked like pterodactyls swooping around us. Their wingspans approached 6 feet. Am I exaggerating? Maybe a little. But they were large. Really large, and we eventually figured out that they were bats. . .locally called Flying Foxes. They are fruit eaters, which explained why everyone in the neighborhood had netting over their fruit trees in their very small patio gardens. 

Fast forward to now, and we have continued our tradition of bat spotting, though not nightly. Now is the perfect time of year, though. It's dusk at about 6:30 or 7p, and we have a deck that is raised above the yard and overlooks the sunset and a lovely tree line. Our bats are considerably smaller. . . maybe a wingspan of 6-10". . .but they are so wonderful to watch in this mosquito prone environment. They swoop and dive and careen. They are only visible for about 30 minutes every evening. We've only seen 2 of them at any given time, but bats seem to be having a moment now. Much like octopuses were a couple of years ago. People are finally seeing these creatures with wonder and curiosity, rather than an automatic "other" reaction. That's got to be a good thing.

And I'm thinking some bat boxes might be in order soon. . . 

As a final note, apples are in now! They are delicious, and the deer seem to agree. I've been bringing in the apples that deer have taken a bite or two out of, trimmed off the bitten parts, and added them to applesauce. We'll be well prepared for winter, as far as applesauce is concerned!

Because of the wet weather earlier, many of them have sooty blotch on the skin, but it's easily washed off and doesn't seem to affect the fruit quality at all. And we have been very dry for the past 2 weeks or so. I am at last very glad that we installed the drip irrigation to all of the beds. We're having a bit of warmish weather as well. . . low 80's and expecting up to 84F this week. I do find that the managing of the harvest and the canning/freezing/blahblah is much more taxing for me than it once was. My back hurts after too many hours on my feet, and I can see ahead to a time when I won't want to work this hard. But now is now. We're good. And well prepped for the winter.