Huge Bat flyout

 Frances picked that there was a full moon rising at 1754 on 6 April.  So we took ourselves down to see what the bats were up to against the rising moon.  A massive flyout is what they were up to.  We were in position by 1758 hours and while the bats were swirling above the camp and making a ruckus there ere no obvious signs of a flyout.  The first group headed over towards Lakeview almost exactly on 1800 hrs.  From then on it was a massive flyout.  

The beauty of the full moon is obvious.  This evening there was light cloud (which nearly made us decide not to go).

We were surprised to see a number of the bats flying low to the water and in some cases actually hitting the surface. I shall enquire as to the purpose of this.

The usual line of light was established.

As I said a massive flyout.  This is 1809 hrs, looking back at the camp.

Most times we have watched before the main stream has been going in apparently one direction.  This night there seemed to be large streams heading to Lakeview, towards town and up The Narrows.  In other words they were going every which way.

An arty shot of bats and moon.

By 1817 hrs it was getting too dark to really see what was going on, but there were still a lot of bats going out.  However we left and got another arty shot of the Jetty as we turned round.

So, how many bats were there?  I really don't know but one of our earlier visits was close to the time when the camp was estimated at 4,000 bats.  The flyout that night lasted for about 10 minutes, and seemed to be nearly all heading to Lakeside.  On 6 April the flyout lasted at least 17 minutes and there seemed to be 3 more or less similar sized streams.  So for order of magnitude I'd say (4000*1.7*3 =)  ~20,000 bats.