WATCH: Bats twirl in sunlight like 'rotisserie' display
HANGING out with flying foxes in the sun may not take everyone's fancy but for Queensland bat rescuer Denise Wade, there's nothing like watching the 'rotisserie'.
Denise, who has her own Batzilla the Bat Facebook page and YouTube channel with more than 45,000 subscribers, is passionate about saving these much maligned creatures.
In a sweet video posted just recently, the bats can be seen doing the "rotisserie", slowly rotating to absorb sun rays on all sides, and moving as little as possible.
The flying foxes looked entirely relaxed ahead of the weekend.
Denise is a self funded volunteer who operates under a government permit to rescue, raise, rehabilitate and repatriate flying-foxes back to the wild.
"Sadly, there are many daily hazards that our precious bats are forced to negotiate,'' she writes on her Facebook page.
"Barbed wire fencing, large aperture anti bird netting thrown over fruit trees, dog and cat attacks, extreme and more frequent weather events, habitat destruction, colony disturbance, legal and illegal shooting, human ignorance and persecution, car hits and electrocution on over head power lines all contribute to high attrition in the wild."
"The purpose of my page is to educate people to the beauty, fragility and necessity of all bat species and together we can make a difference to the lives of Australia's only nocturnal, long distance pollinators and seed dispersers of native forests."
Denise has appealed for donations to purchase wildlife safe Hailguard to cut into 6 x 6 metre pieces to distribute free of charge at all large aperture netting rescues our volunteers attend.
Donations to the Batzilla the Bat Netting Fund can be made via Paypal donations at firstname.lastname@example.org
Flying foxes feed on fruit, flowers, pollen and nectar and generally congregate in camps made up of large numbers of individuals.
They are highly mobile, ranging up to 40 km from their camps at night to feed. They also move up to hundreds of kilometres to follow the flowering and fruiting of food sources.
According to Queensland environmental agencies, they play a vital role in keeping our ecosystems in good health.
They pollinate flowers and disperse seeds as they forage on the nectar and pollen of eucalypts, melaleucas and banksias and on the fruits of rainforest trees and vines.
Seven species are found in Australia, some of which are critically endangered or threatened.