Twelve months later and the coast is clear, bringing relief to cherry farmers who are busy dealing with the drought and now rain during the picking season.

But exactly what has happened to NSW’s bat colonies is a mystery.

Orange grower Guy Gaeta spotted the first colony last December when he saw them flying near Duntryleague golf course.

“I’ve been looking around all the spots I know. They’re not here,” he said.

“They haven’t come. It’s a relief at the moment.”

NSW Farmers executive councillor Reg Kidd said he had also been looking for bats but not seen any in the regular roosting positions.

Storm Stanford, a bat co-ordinator with WIRES, the NSW Wildlife, Information, Education and Rescue Service, said the bats were also missing in action in Sydney and nearby coastal areas.

“The bats, there are very few around in Sydney, which is odd. There are some in Nowra, but not very many,” she said.

Ms Stanford said about 20,000-30,000 had been killed in a ‘heat stress event’ in Cairns last month but said they were mostly not the species found in Sydney and Orange.

She said she had normally had to rescue or treat about 40 pups around November-December in NSW but had only picked up two this year.

“It is really, really odd,” she said.

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Ms Stanford said the bats preferred to eat the nectar of native fruit in rain forests and only headed to the Central West when there was a critical food shortage in their coastal areas.

“Commercially grown fruit is their backstop, it is not what they would prefer to eat,” she said.