Month: December 2017

Batman

This little free-tailed bat was found on the ground by young Savannah, in the pasture in front of her house in Brenham, TX.  She has a big heart and wanted to help the little guy, but knew not to pick him up with her bare hands.  She got her mum and they used two sticks to put him in a box, then waited till night and placed him in a tree.  He only stretched one wing, not the other, then fell out of the tree, so they recovered him and brought the little bat to us up in Austin.
When we examined him, we saw why he fell.  He has a painful bruise on his left elbow! It does not appear to be fractured, however, so we think he’ll be just fine with plenty of rest and good food.
Great save Savannah!  And thanks to your mum Ester and younger sister Kylie for bringing the bat to us for some TLC.
This was our 201st bat of 2017 so we call him 17-201, but Kylie says his name is Batman!

Posted on , updated on by The Refuge

Follow Amy through her Costa Rican Adventure

Greetings earthlings,

 

My name is Amy Hall and I have been a volunteer with Austin Bat Refuge for almost a year now. I’ve fallen in love with their little faces and personalities. But the time has come for me to leave the country temporarily. As part of my Professional of Science Master’s in Environmental Management and Sustainability program, my last semester is a project-based internship of our choosing. A series of opportunities has led me to my project. Like Lee and Dianne said in their introductory post, I will be spending 10 weeks trekking across Costa Rica creating acoustic profiles of bats in areas of different land-use. I will be deploying full-spectrum Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter SM4 Recorders and using Kaleidoscope Pro to hopefully collect as much high quality data as possible, parse through it, and see what species or frequency guilds they can detect.

I will be with 4 or 5 other interns who are working on their own projects; from social research to water quality to primate behavior. All of our research is funded by the National Science Foundation.

 

I will be uploading blog post and picture updates probably once every week or two, depending on how busy I am and how good the internet connection is. Feel free to email me with questions (ahall6@stedwards.edu). While I am there I will not have any service except for Wifi when I am at the stations. So responses will likely lag.

 

I’m excited to share my experiences with you guys!

Amy Hall watering red bat pups

Posted on , updated on by The Refuge

Amy is off to Costa Rica!

Our wonderful friend/intern/volunteer Amy Hall, is heading off to Costa Rica for three months of bat research!
She is working with Dr. Peter Beck from St. Edward’s University and Dr. Michael Wasserman from Indiana University, and her project will use acoustic sampling to determine presence/absence of bat species in various types of habitats around the country.
She will deploy Wildlife Acoustics SM4 (Song Meter) bat detectors and analyze the data using Kaleidoscope tropical acoustic call libraries.

We are so excited for her!
Please join us in wishing Amy all the best and follow her updates when internet connections become available.

Posted on , updated on by The Refuge

No CenTex bat action

No Congress flight on Wed night 13Dec2017, despite warmer temps than previous evening when ~65k flew out of Congress.
Could this mean that the last hangers-on (~400k) finally moved south?
They had moved back up to Huber then came back to IH35 corridor.  Maybe a full week of low temps in the upper 30sF finally convinced them?

Congress Avenue Bridge bats radar migration

Posted on by The Refuge

Huber heading back to IH35 corridor

About 400k free-tailed bats left Huber Limestone Mine and headed back to Congress and McNeil on the first night after the SNOW!  Calm winds  – Temp 43F, Dew Point 36 F rising, but no precipitation.
We’re surprised to see them move on such a cold night.  They must know there will be little food in the Hill Country after that freeze and that their best shot at finding insects will be in the Blackland Prairie and IH35 corridor. Will they majority finally migrate now? Or will they try to overwinter? We’ll see!

Posted on by The Refuge