A colony of grey-headed flying foxes, believed to number more than 5000, have set up home less than a kilometre from Tamworth’s central business district.

The night flyers have taken up residence in the

paulonia trees near the old Paradise bridge off King George V Ave and are already causing problems for residents.

It appears the problems experienced by residents in council areas south of the city, including at Maitland, Singleton and Cessnock, may have flown our way.

Ruth Stuart’s front yard was invaded by the flying foxes last week.

After stripping the trees there, they moved over the back fence.

“They are noisy and disgusting,” she said.

Having had enough of the noise and mess Ms Stuart has been taking to the garden a few times daily, armed with one of her best saucepans and a metal spoon she bangs together to disturb the bats.

“I want to make them as uncomfortable as possible so they move on faster,” she said.

“I started tooting the car horn but that wasn’t as effective; banging the saucepan stirs them up and drives them crazy enough to fly away for a while.”

Ms Stuart was most concerned about the health implications the presence of the group may cause.

“There are a lot of horses in and around this area,” she said.

“Bats can cause huge problems for them, and for humans too, and it doesn’t help they’ve been defecating everywhere.”

Associate vet at Tamworth Equine Veterinary, located on King George V Ave, Tamara McElroy, said the problem of the bats had not made its way down to where the veterinary surgery is and that the presence of the animals shouldn’t cause too much alarm yet.

“Recommendations suggest that if a horse owner is worried there are a number of measures they can take to protect their animals from the Hendra virus,” she said.

Those recommendations included keeping horses out of paddocks where there were trees with fruit, moving water troughs out from under trees and even electrifying areas underneath the trees where bat dropping might be.

“We have never had a case of Hendra here in our area and it’s important that while people follow the precautions they keep a general eye on their animals anyway,” Dr McElroy said.

Bats have caused huge problems for council regions south of Tamworth since the beginning of the year.

Bat-weary Lorn residents called on Maitland City Council to take urgent action against flying foxes in March after they conducted an aerial assault on the suburb.

A management plan that included a raft of strategies, from culling to habitat management, was put into place with the help of consulting firm GeoLINK.

Other strategies discussed by the council an community members in the lead-up to the strategy being developed included a similar approach to that developed for the starlings that plagued Tamworth’s Peel St – the use of water, light and sound blitzes to move the bats on.

A month later the foxes of the sky caused huge problems for students at Singleton Public School playground.

Parents at the school campaigned to get rid of the bats after they moved in during the Easter school holidays.

Concerned by the potential of the animals to cause health problems to their children led to the children having lunch and recess indoors and sanitation hand washes being made available in every classroom, the areas under the offending trees had been cordoned off, extra cleaning was arranged and staff had been designated to handle any dead bats found in the playground.

Luckily though, the bats moved on.

It’s not known if it’s the same problematic colony of bats or a different one but studies done on some of the bats in and around the Maitland area suggested they travelled as far as the mid-north coast at times.

Where the problem colonies from Lorn, Singleton and Cessnock were in May is not known, but it’s possible they could be our problem in July.

Tamworth has experienced flying fox invasions before.

East Tamworth was home to a colony of about 2500 in the early 2000s but those bats often only stayed to eat the fruit on the trees and were gone about a month later.

It could be a similar story for the King George V Ave bats too.

Mrs Stuart said the bats were rarely there at night and that suggested they weren’t breeding in the trees.

“Hopefully that means they will only stay for a short time and then they’ll be off again,” she said.