The megabats of Adelaide: SA adjusts to new and growing colonies of flying foxes

A mild summer and plentiful resources has seen the Adelaide colony’s population of megabats, also known as flying foxes or fruit bats, surge. Photograph: Sia Duff/The Guardian

A stand of pine trees near the Adelaide zoo erupts every sunset as tens of thousands of megabats take to the sky. The metre-wide, scalloped wings of these grey-headed flying foxes silhouette against the sky like the summoning sign for a certain superhero.

Flying foxes first appeared in numbers in Adelaide around 2010 after climate change-related food shortages drove them further south. Drought conditions and habitat loss forced them out of New South Wales and Victoria, and once they found a good spot they settled in – and bred.