How many fruitbats live on Fregate Island?

Avid readers of our newsletters alrady know that there is quite a big fruit bat colony on the island. In the past, no counts were conducted, so our volunteers applied direct count approaches for each of the trees where they are roosting. Interetingly enough, there were 15 species of trees but mostly Indian Almond as well as Indian Mulberry trees. The survey was done 2 times on 2 different days by 2 different obsevers from 10am to 12pm as this is when the fruit bats are less active. We then calculated the average number of fruit bats to get the best estimation which is: a population of fruit bats of 884!