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Project Noah Nature School
Dobsonia moluccensis magna
A small, ill or injured, flying fox.The species ID is not made with certainty! External characters for Donsonia genus include "the presence of a distinct tail, and the attachment of the wing membranes along middle of back" http://taxondiversity.fieldofscience.com...
Observed flying near the ground in a narrow space between houses and a boundary fence, in a large semi-urban yard & garden next to a disturbed patch of remnant lowland forest in the equatorial tropics of northern New Guinea.
One of the oddest encounters I can remember. At 16:00-17:00 I was out looking for insects. In my peripheral vision I saw a good-sized brown blur fly by near to the ground. Well, birds are very rare in my neighborhood so I was intrigued and gave chase around the corner of my house. It was a flying fox! How odd at this time of day and so low to the ground. It must have been ill or injured because it crashed to the ground and I was able to photograph it. I did not see any external wound. Not having equipment or expertise to deal with the animal, I put it in a box and transferred it to the above-mentioned patch of forest so that my dogs would not attack it. Because of all of the New Year's pyrotechnics, I wonder if it was the victim of a firework.
Spotted on Jan 1, 2014
Submitted on Jan 1, 2014
1 Comment
The bat seems to have recovered enough to have left the shelter box last night :-)