Ever wonder about bat’s pest control services? We see evidence every morning that bats are at work for us, all night long.
We grow crops to attract moths; the females lay their eggs on our brassicas such as collard greens, curly kale, swiss chard, and cabbage. We allow the larvae to eat all they want of the nutritious greens and they soon become moths. Without bats to balance the numbers of crop pests, our food crops would take a beating.
Collard greens moth nursery
The flight cage is full of moths nowadays and the rehabilitating bats are loving their hunting practice.
female evening bat on the huntYoung Mexican free-tailed bat skimming the crops
When moths hear echolocation of an approaching bat, millions of years of evolution kick in and they employ various defense mechanisms. In our aviary some fly erratically while others drop to the ground to evade the bats. Normally dropping works well as they hide in the grass, but in our fight cage they often drop into the bats’ drinking troughs. Each morning we go out to rescue the moths trapped by the surface tension of the water.
Live moths trapped by surface tension
Morning moth lifeguard dutiesAll moths are extraordinary – some are exquisite
Soon the brassicas will have served their purpose. We’ve eaten lots this winter, but as the insects begin to ravage them in the spring, they form a bitter latex in their leaves that makes them unpalatable to the larvae, but also to us! Soon we will replace them with a cover crop, to fix nitrogen in the soil and protect the soil from the hot summer sun. And we’ll plant the winter garden again in the fall.
Mothra was brought to us by Erika Rix back on 18May2015.
Erica opened her garden shed for the first time since the fall, and discovered a bat with a tiny newborn. She was super excited and quietly closed the door so as not to disturb them.
The next day however, the mother was gone, leaving the pup to fend for herself all day. The pup got weaker and weaker and eventually fell to the floor of the shed, where Erica found her, late that night, umbilicus still attached. She scooped her up and brought her to us the next day. This was the start of a three year rehabilitaion project that brought us an immeasurable amount of joy. Nice work, Erika!
The first few days were dicey, but she accepted the milk replacement formula we fed her every two hours, and she liked her warm roost.
At the time we were short-staffed, so that meant that in a few days, a carpenter dude (me!) had to bring her to work, a remodeling project that was in the framing stage with lots of noise and action. We used a sugar glider bonding pouch to keep her safe, worn inside a shirt. Even though the pouch was against a body, it really wasn’t warm enough for her to thrive. And the constant motion and noise was not the best. Even so, she hung on, clinging to life, but fading over the next five days. Thankfullly help arrived as Dianne got back in town after a week at an urban wildlife conference, and diagnosed her problem as a lack of body heat and quiet. The little pup responded immediately to her care (yay Dianne!) and finally seemed to stabilize enought to where we felt we could give her a name, Mothra!
She became a beautiful juvenile velifer!
Look at these elegant toe nails!
Some people think they are a rather plain bat, but we beg to differ! They have a subtle, yet radiant, beauty that is undeniable!
She became a real joy to us as we watched her progress through the stages of pup-hood, jumping out of our hands as she took her first flights around the room. What a cutie!
Once she was weaned and eating mealworms from a coop cup, it was time for the flight cage.
Here are some of her first flights. She has a look of triumph on her face as she lands on the far wall, as if to say “I made it all the way down here!”
We watched with pride as she became a magnificent flyer, and even saw her catch one of her first moths! This was exciting for us because many people believed that an orphaned bat would not learn to hunt without a mother. Well this girl did!
We noticed that her wing tips were rounded, compared to most of our bats, and we thought it might be an abnormality due to the milk formula.
We had no other velifers with which to compare her, so we did not realize that this is completely normal for the species!
Since we raised her from day 2 and she had no conspecifics, she was friendlier that most bat pups. We would go out each morning and hold her against our necks to warm her up, then feed her breakfast while we watched the sunrise. These were great days for us, to love a bat pup and have her love us back unabashedly. She was very playful and loved to land in the middle of our backs, then fly off when we tried to reach for her. We think this was because she had no other velifer pups with which to play and we were her family.
But it also made us very nervous about releasing her and worrying what would happen if she did this to a human she did not know. The only velifer caves we knew about were in the middle of neighborhoods and were often visited by the most dangerous animal on the planet, young humans! She would not survive a close encounter or a landing on the back of such a creature.
And so she stayed with us. Slowly but surely, she visited us less often, especially once we got two more non-releasable velifers. She formed a new family with them and, over time, learned how to be a velifer. We continued our search for caves that were protected and not within densly-packed neighborhoods in Brushy Creek MUD. Bats from culverts in Brushy Creek sometimes come to us with what appear to be human-caused injuries.
We finally got word of just such a protected cave this summer that has a few thousand velifers and tri-colored bats roosting within. We secured permission from the owners to bring Mothra, two other velifers, and three tri-colored bats (PipPup!) there for release.
It is a beauty of a cave and we felt so good about this spot.
We really stepped up the food and water for these bats starting a week before release and then took goodbye videos before they were gone from our lives.
Then it was down to the cave mouth to show her new home.
Having never seen a cave, she was pretty anxious, but she knew something momentous was about to happen.
Soon wild velifers started pouring from the cave mouth as we held her on a rock high above.
After all these years, we had hoped for a beautiful release, but rarely do things work out as planned for our videos.
But it worked out for Mothra! Here she drops into the stream of wild bats and although it was pretty dark, we’re sure she joined the stream of exiting bats and joined them in their evening feed. We can only hope that come dawn, she followed them back into the cave that we showed her earlier and made it her new home.
Love you Mothra. May the bat gods keep you safe. What a priviledge and an honor it was to know you. You’ll always be family to us!
The female pip (The Pip Mum) was in trouble here on this stair tread. She could have been stepped on or mauled by a cat or dog.
The adjacent apartment renter’s mother was visiting her pregnant daughter and called to have the bat removed.
She really wanted a bat disposal service and would not assist or even be present when we arrived to rescue this little bat.
It was not until we mentioned that this little bat girl was also likely pregnant, that she took interest and then desperately wanted to meet the bat.
The bat was dehydrated and not well nourished, but uninjured. In the early photos and videos she is noticeable skinny.
There were not many drinking sources around the area except swimming pools, so perhaps the chlorine water was getting to her.
We brought her in for hydration therapy and good food to build her strength.
After a few weeks, she had put on weight, but we noticed that she was beautifully rounded even between feedings.
She was indeed pregnant!
We thought she would have twins, as is likely for tri-colored bats, but soon we discovered it was just the one pup,
a beautiful little ball of bat blubber, found nursing under her wing.
Just a few days later, she has a little fur and her body and HER EARS! are quite a bit longer.
At this point, we still did not know the sex of the pup, since we were so reluctant to disturb mum & pup.
A week later she is more fully furred and helping with the family hang!
A bit later and she would give mum a break from nursing from time to time.
After a few weeks of watching, we finally had to check to see if she was a boy or a girl.
We picked her up (A GIRL!) and she gave a squawk while exploding into a twisting, evasive flight!
Here she is flying at 2-1/2 weeks of age. CUTE!
We watched her grow up over the next few months, while we got them through the wicked drought this summer.
We saw her become a skilled hunter as she practiced catching moths under the flight cage lights.
Pip pup learing to hunt at around 5 weeks
Eyeballing a moth 1-1/2 months
Mastering the Tail Grab (moth rolled up inside tail membrane) 2 months
Here you can see her face behind the translucent tail membrane that covers it, as she bites a moth she has just scooped up.
This was so much fun to watch!!!
The normal mother / daughter dynamics played out during this time as the pup became quite a handful for the mum.
The weaning process is always a difficult time for both and it went on for quite a few weeks until they finally started roosting together again.
We fed them (and all 40 free-ranging bats) one mealworm at a time all summer long!
The pip pup (below) was hand-fed 1,200 mealworms while we had her! Her mum 1,500!
Finally the rains that broke the drought ended and we were able to take her and her mum to release.
They were accompanied by another tri-colored bat and three cave myotis.
Here is the pip pup, the day of her release.
It’s so great to see what our pups (they are all pups to us) will see when they come home at dawn.
We released the pip pup and her mum at dark, into a stream of bats leaving the cave. We feel sure that they will join the colony in foraging and follow them home to this wonderful roost.
Thanks so much everybody who cared for these bats!!! This is what love looks like!!!
The Release!
Mum leads the way, calling to her pup, saying, “Time to make a break for it!!! Let’s go!!!”
We’re so happy to see them go to such a great home. Thanks universe, for getting something right!
This little eastern red bat boy needs a name! 18-147 just doesn’t have much of a ring to it!
Rescued by Hannah, as grackles surround him on her breezeway floor in San Marcos, she brought him to our info table at the Congress Avenue Bridge last Friday. He wowed those who witnessed the intake process, and all of us marveled at the beauty of this little pup!
Here he gets another meal of his milk-replacement formula as he gets a supervised introduction to the outdoor reds.
And now a mealworm to top off the tank as the flight cage reds in the background anticipate their breakfast.
And finally he takes his place in the flight cage stair-step heiarchy! (That’s him at the upper right)
He’s so little we’ll have to watch him real closely as he introduces himself to all the others
Our red bat families are all color-coded (with corresponding control numbers) so that we can raise and release them together. It was the “green family” release time last night and what a joy it was to see them all fly off together on a beautiful summer evening!
These red bats were found by Brad Fellers on the ground at his Leander home and certainly would have been killed by predators had he not cared enought to save them. The orphan was saved by Megan Rodriguez near Anderson Mill.
It was our great pleasure to help the pups grow up, turning from little furry blobs of bat blubber into amazing flying, hunting, and self-sufficient wonders of the night sky.
We placed each bat in a pup tent first and one by one we watered, fed, and showed them their back-up drinking trough; the infinity-edged pool that we’ll keep nice and full for them throughout the oncoming drought.
Here’s one of the pups drinking from the pool.
Once all were fed and watered, it was up to the release platform high in a tree above their former enclosure. They were all super-excited and we first did a controlled release with the mum, then quickly set the pups free to follow her, so they could all stay together.
Here’s the happy family circling high in the sky, celebrating their freedom on a beautiful Texas summer night. Live long lives little bats and make lots more beautiful bat babies! Thanks for the memories!
What a great illustration of a moth jamming a bat’s echolocation!
Illustration by Chris Tullar from Aaron Corcoran.
This is a great depiction of what goes on in our flight cage every night (albeit with different species)!
Bats have been echolocating for around 25 million years and moths have been evolving defenses against them for just as long.
A bat has to be at the top of its game to make a living out there.
Our former neo-nate D-Dayhad his big night last night! He and all his classmates joined the Congress bat colony, in plenty of time to integrate prior to their migration south in a few weeks to come. So thrilling to watch them go!
D-Day was found on June 6th as a newborn pup clinging to the top of the bridge with just his feet and tail sticking up under the railing.
Dianne rescued him and hand-raised him and his free-tailed classmates from little specks, so tonight was emotional, as the end of their captive upbringing and the beginning of their new life as part of the wild Congress Avenue Bridge colony! Go with the bat gods, with the wind, with your guts, little pups!
Danielle O’Neil’s great photo of D-Day at 3 weeks:
Just to train them correctly, we waited until all the tourists left before releasing them from the top of the grassy slope of the bat viewing area ;). (It seems the Congress colony waited to emerge until the crowd of tuna boats, kayaks, LED lights, and red lights went away, before they emerged.) So our pups will learn from the best! That means, of course, that our pup also did not cooperate with the paparazzi, so no videos or photos of the release! Good bats! This photo from the flight cage earlier in the season.
People from Poland, France, and Alaska all came to see the emergence last night! We love having our information table at the bridge to help inform the tourists about the bats.
We love to watch the behavior of the bats while they are hunting. The top photo shows a red bat echolocating a moth above his head just before he loops up to attempt a capture. We’re not sure if he caught one this time, but the bottom photo shows him flying around with a moth he captured a few minutes before the top photo was taken. The photos are obviously out of focus, but they capture hunting behavior so well that we had to post them.
Free-tailed pup trying on his scary face for Halloween. We’re not buying it – still way cute!
Best Insta-replies?
From pink_1101floyd “Fire the lasers!”
From 747mandi “Game face!”
Look at these elegant toe nails!
Some people think they are a rather plain bat, but we beg to differ! They have a subtle, yet radiant, beauty that is undeniable!
