365 Project, Day 54
Here is my day fifty-four submission to my 365Project:
Quite unexpectedly I had a very different type of mammal come by this morning. Initially, I thought another juvenile cape gannet was approaching us (I had just seen one shortly before this) but as I started snapping photos I thought maybe it was a hawk or some other type of bird...but then I realized it was actually a large bat! After some consultation with Google and other people who have worked offshore it is a straw-coloured fruit bat (Eidolon helvum). This sighting definitely made my morning :)
Fun fact of the day:
Straw-coloured fruit bats are strong flyers and have been seen up to 125 miles from the nearest land (we were 40 miles offshore today).
Read more about the Straw-coloured fruit bat at the Oregon Zoo's webpage about these bats.
And here are some more images of the bat in flight:
Quite unexpectedly I had a very different type of mammal come by this morning. Initially, I thought another juvenile cape gannet was approaching us (I had just seen one shortly before this) but as I started snapping photos I thought maybe it was a hawk or some other type of bird...but then I realized it was actually a large bat! After some consultation with Google and other people who have worked offshore it is a straw-coloured fruit bat (Eidolon helvum). This sighting definitely made my morning :)
Fun fact of the day:
Straw-coloured fruit bats are strong flyers and have been seen up to 125 miles from the nearest land (we were 40 miles offshore today).
Read more about the Straw-coloured fruit bat at the Oregon Zoo's webpage about these bats.
And here are some more images of the bat in flight:
Brilliant observation! Please consider sharing it with AfriBats at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.inaturalist.org/projects/afribats
Simply click on "Add observation" and the rest should be self-explanatory.
Many thanks!
Oh, additional background information on straw-coloured fruit bats, incl. recent observations, can be found here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/40827-Eidolon-helvum
http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/40827-Eidolon-helvum#taxon_range
AfriBats! Thanks for your message and the additional links to more information...much appreciated! I will definitely look at sharing this sighting with AfriBats :)
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