Help Baby Bats Take Flight!

It's baby bat season again.

85% of baby flying foxes are born in a 6 week period in spring. Their mothers carry them for the first 5 weeks, until they get too heavy, and if something happens to mum at this time, the babies often come into care.

A common problem is that the mother bat may rest on powerlines, and then, as the more than 1m wingspan unfurls, she may touch 2 lines and get electrocuted. When this happens the mother nearly always dies, but the baby (called a "pup") often survives. They can be surprisingly hardy, sometimes surviving for days after their mum has died.

This little one was recovered after such a long wait that the poor little girl had got maggots, which inspired her name: Magda.

Magda was lucky to be rescued by a dedicated volunteer is now doing very well. She's bottle fed 5 times a day on milk with extra additives, and will gradually be introduced to fruit and nectar. When she is about 12 weeks old, and just learning to fly, she will move into the beautiful creche cage, together with the other baby bats.

Fortunately this year we have not (touch wood) had any heat stress events like the one one from last year, so we hope the numbers of pups coming into care won't increase. Much though we love them, we would prefer them to be with their mums.

But for the unlucky ones who have lost their mums, we now have the best facilities possible to help them recover and rejoin their colony.

Thank you so much for helping bats like Magda have another chance at life.

Seasons matter in bat care. Most baby flying foxes are born in a 3 week period in October/November, and are carried by their mothers for the first 5 weeks or so. If the mother gets injured or dies in this time, the pup may survive- this is how most of the babies come into care. Generally their mothers have been caught in netting or electrocuted on power lines. The last of the pups was released in April.

The bats in care now are mostly victims of netting entanglement. Not all bats survive entanglement, and those that do often have severe injuries requiring extensive treatment and rehabilitation. There's a lot of work in rehabilitating injured flying foxes. But fortunately we have some amazing volunteers. If you check the link, you'll find a little video about one of our bat-obsessed vollies: Sarah "Bat-Girl" Curran.

Until the baby season starts in force, it is relatively quiet at the creche and release facility. The daily fruit chop is only about 8kg, down from 30kg or so in peak times. We've spent some of the quiet time making preparations, including training up volunteers to cope with heat stress events, which sadly are becoming much more common.

You can help too, by only using wildlife friendly netting (mesh size less than 5mm), and always reporting bats on powerlines, so we can see if there is a living pup we can save.

Many many thanks for all your help!

Links:

• Bat Girl!