http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/bats_and_lighting.html
A treasure trove of critically important information for everyone, but especially for Austin’s South Central Waterfront District
BCT’s bats & lighting page
Bats & Lighting UK Guidelines 2014
http://www.bats.org.uk/data/files/Bats_and_Lighting_-_Overview_of_evidence_and_mitigation_-_2014.pdf
First two paragraphs:
“These guidelines have been drafted in response to a rising number of developments and associated artificial lighting impacting
upon bat populations in the UK. There is increasing evidence of the impacts of artificial lighting on ecosystems and, as nocturnal animals, bats are likely to be impacted negatively. These guidelines are borne out of research undertaken by Emma Stone during her PhD investigating the impacts of street lighting on bats and provide a synthesis of the issues and evidence-based advice of the potential impact of lighting on bats and possible mitigation strategies.”
“These guidelines have been drafted with input from experts in lighting (Institute of Lighting Professionals), bat surveys, ecology and mitigation (Bat Conservation Trust), legislation (Natural England) and bat research and mitigation (University of Bristol) to provide the best current evidence and thinking in the field of mitigation of the impacts of lighting on bats. This document is aimed at ecologists, lighting engineers, architects, planners and ecologists in Local Authorities and Statutory Nature Conservation Organisations such as Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage or Natural Resources Wales.”
Rucker Bat Cave & Fern Cave, early spring
Rucker & Fern early spring 20 MB click link to left for video
Rucker Bat Cave (TX8) in Edwards County Texas is always active this time of year, as Mexican free-tailed bats make their way back into Central Texas. This reflectivity represents many hundreds of thousands of bats. Were happy to see Fern Cave (TX6) in Val Verde County with a large emergence also, we have been seeing fewer bats there than in years past.
She’s sustaining flight tonight
Yes she has teeth, but she’s not snarling, just echolocating, to see in the dark and to find one of the juicy moths or beetles flying about the enclosure. After parsing many call sequences from that evening, we analyzed this one call out of a call sequence we think is hers. Many of our local species, including yellows are not in standard call libraries, but this call is similar to others we have recorded from northern yellows. We hope to get a voucher call when she is released soon. Voucher calls are recorded from a hand-released bat when no others are flying in the immediate vicinity. They form the basis of call libraries and that is what we’ll use to develop our own.
Godzilla & Mothra
Northern yellow bats are awesome creatures. At 28.3 grams, she is three times the weight of the velifer in the upper right of the photo. Check out those beautiful broad wings. We’re so lucky to have them in Austin! Let’s help them out by not trimming the skirt of dead fronds under the green crown of our palm trees. They have evolved to blend in perfectly with that habitat. They feel so secure there, that they are slow to awaken from torpor, and often plummet to the ground when the dead fronds are trimmed.
Local Rehabilitation Intake Map
Here’s a compilation of our local rehabilitation intakes. Lots of overlap downtown obscures pins. So many people went out of their way to help these bats! Thank you all so much.
Key is 1-Mexican free-tailed, 2- Eastern red bat, 3- Northern yellow, 4- Evening bat, 5- Tri-colored bat, 6- Cave myotis, 7- Southern yellow bat, 8- Seminole bat
Batting averages on the rise
Mothra!
We have photographic evidence that our wonderful Myotis velifer, Mothra, can catch her own food on the wing. She’s sure come a long way since we got here as a neo-nate last summer. Love this bat!
Getting ready
Our over-winter evening bat guests have been shredding the flight cage the last few nights. First clear night we’ll wait till the flyers are hunting in the flight cage, then we’ll take the non-volants out of the bat box and put them in a pup tent. The next morning we’ll have only flyers in the box and we can gather them for release. These are very cool little bats!
Inga Geipel seminar UT Austin
Great talk yesterday by Inga Geipel of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Panama titled: “Bats: Finding prey through sound – two ends of an acoustic spectrum”.
On one end of the spectrum: Trachops cirrhosus, the fringe-lipped bat, a passive listener which waits for its frog prey to call and make itself known.
On the other end of the spectrum: Micronycteris microtis, an active listener which uses echolocation to seek out it’s dragonfly prey in the jungle understory.
Inga and her collaborators at STRI utilize an impressive array of instrumentation to document how each of these bats make a living. It’s always fascinating to see the results of their latest study and hearing about what they are dreaming up next!