Sydney is known as the Emerald City because it has so many parks and there is none bigger than Centennial Park (founded in 1888, one hundred years after the First Fleet entered Sydney Harbour.)

This park had been on my birding list for months before my arrival. It is an urban birding Mecca.

While I was birding in the massive park between the Duck Pond and Lachlan Swamp I heard an unworldly racket coming from the gum trees.

I saw what I took to be a large bird flying from one tree to another. I had to get a closer look. Perhaps another lifer!

What I stumbled upon was Centennial Park’s flying-fox colony!

The gum trees were adorned with these mega bats, all making a cacophonous symphony with individuals switching trees and other resting.

This was another “I’m not in Kansas anymore!” experiences as we only have microbats in the Northern Hemisphere. I figured anything that I saw flying in the Australian skies would be feathered.

The bats that roost in Centennial Park are grey-faced and black flying-foxes.

I pulled out my sketchbook and drew the roosting bats in the gum trees, the result looked like a very odd Christmas tree. My sketching was in the presence of an observant perched kookaburra.