This male free-tailed bat was found grounded on a cold night last week. He found his way inside an entry vestibule of a business. Quick work by the staff ensured his safe rescue and he is now back out in the wild, in time to find a better roost before the next cold snap. Great work everyone!
Dianne releases a male free-tail that was found cold-stunned last week. Thanks Holy and Carmen, for rescuing this little guy! Great work, all of you!
Here’s a beautiful tri-colored female that had been roosting in a stairwell landing on the second story of an apartment building in South Austin. She was in the same place for about a week with no sign that she had been able to fly or feed. Her location made her vulnerable to maintenance workers or perhaps a fearful apartment dweller with a broom.
Wildlife lovers Sonja Peterson and Thanh Vo had been checking on her and were worried that she had not seemed to move for a long time. They were relieved to finally see her stretch her wings a few days back, but were concerned that she might be injured and unable to feed herself. So we went to look and spotted her immediately when we pulled up to the building. We plucked her off the wall (with gloves on) and brought her back to check her out in the flight cage.
Her wings were beautiful, no spotting, no tears, no broken bones.
We checked her out under UV light and no florescence showed up that would indicate Pd, the fungus that causes White-nose Syndrome.
She flew right off when given the opportunity and we watched as she did about six laps around the aviary. This is way more continuous flight than the last tri-colored we took in a few days ago.
So this leaves us to wonder why she would roost in such an exposed location, vulnerable to any humans walking by or even grackles which could easily spot her against the white stucco.
Most of our tri-colored bats come to us from the upper levels of apartment buildings that have open-ended corridors leading to the various apartments. We think the bats consider these to be open-ended caves and feel quite at home there. At this time of year both sexes of tri-coloreds should be swarming at cave mouths and mating, the females storing sperm for spring births. Is it possible this bat is misplaced and hanging around wondering where the guys are?
We’ll feed her up and then bring her back to the same area and hope she finds a real cave to get her back on track.
Check out our local species info page: https://austinbatrefuge.org/tri-colored-bat/
Sonja and Thanh are doing great work with the feral cats around their apartment. Thanks to them this bat and all other wildlife will fare much better in their area. Thanks for caring Sonja and Thanh!
So our tri-colored bat checks out clean under the black light, no orange fluorescence, no spotting in normal light, we think she’s clean for Pd, no White-nose Syndrome.
She’s not sustaining flight however. She flew the length of the flight cage once but landed and has only taken short flights since then. It is said that they are sporadic flyers with a short elliptical flight patterns, so this may be normal. But she did not fly away when she had the opportunity as we were collecting her, so we’ll need to check her out some more to make sure she has the strength a bat needs to survive in the wild.
On the left is the recording of her call as she made that one flight down the length of the flight cage. On the right is a call from the reference library of a tri-colored bat in Mammoth Cave State Park in Kentucky from back in 2007. Tragically, tri-colored bats in that area have been decimated by White-nose Syndrome, numbers have plummeted 80% since it’s arrival in 2013 and that song is likely not heard very often in that area nowadays. How sad to think of all the bats that have perished from this terrible disease. And awful to think we’ll likely be dealing with it ourselves in a year or two.
She weighs 8 grams! So surprising that a tiny bat would weigh so much. She looks about the same size as our evening bat Zonker, not way smaller as we would have expected.
This tri-colored bat was hanging in an apartment building 2nd story hallway in North Austin for the past few days.
She hadn’t left to forage and was soon to attract attention from the maintenance staff, so our good friend Ed Sones brought her in. She showed just how quick a tri-colored bat can be when Ed was collecting her, but did not fly away, so we’ll need to check for wing damage once she gets more accustomed to us.
Almost all our tri-colored bats come from apartment building hallways on the upper levels. They must think these open ended hallways are just another cave and perfectly suitable for them; and they would be if it weren’t for all those pesky humans!
Her orange forearms, tiny size, pointy nose, and longer ears all indicate Perimyotis subflavus, formerly Pipistrellus subflavus, commonly known as Tri-colored bat, formerly Eastern Pipistrelle. Whew, they sure do make it complicated!
Check out her range and species info on our webpage https://austinbatrefuge.org/tri-colored-bat/
Kyndal Irwin (& Zonker)
Kyndal is a sophmore at the University of Texas and taking a heavy course load in their College of Biological Sciences. Genetics and Bio-Statistics will serve her well in her career in bat work.
We love having her as part of the team!
Congratulations Austin Bat Girl, on completing the summer intern program at Austin Bat Refuge!
Your dedication went above and beyond a call of duty!
You are now an ABR Certified Bat Handler!
The loving care you gave the Bat Class of 2016 ensured they got the very best start to their new, wild lives.
Or, as you would put it, in your own inimitable way:
“After months of making a determined team, the bats and Austin Bat Refuge are proud to say, that together- WE DID IT! ”
This pup says “I’m ready to be released! Thanks for the help, humans!”
Tonight, many of our bats will return to a life in the wild! Get on with your bat self! We’ll miss you guys, thanks for all the fun!”
LG, a northern yellow bat, fell from the top of a very tall palm tree when it was cut down. He was severely bruised all over his body and was in such great pain that he could barely lift his head when he was brought to Marsha Price, our amazing, wonderful friend and bat-savant at our Houston branch. Marsha at first thought he had a fracture on his right wing shaft, but after a while she determined that it was just severely bruised. She nursed him back to health slowly but surely over the next few weeks, to the point where he needed the aviary to see if he would be releasable. Now that the mum & pups are gone, we can better tell about LG’s flight skills. Here’s a photo of him cruising the aviary last night and we can see that he has a some damage to a joint in his right wing.
Upon examination, it is obviously inflamed, so we’ll give him Metacam to reduce the swelling and see if he’ll let us check his range of motion in a few days.
He does fly and land quite well, he just doesn’t fly all night like the yellows we released last week. We hope he shows enough improvement to be released before winter, but if not, he’ll be well taken care of while helping with our pest control in the flight cage Winter Garden.
This Mexican free-tailed pup was found 17July2016 under Congress Ave Bridge. This was the first day the skypuppies took flight this year and it seems a mid-air collision grounded him on the footpath. Bat watchers correctly refrained from handling him and when they alerted us, we brought him back to our facility for care. We discovered that his forearm was curved in a manner reminiscent of the arches of the bridge, so of course he was named Archie and we expected he would likely not become volant. To our delight, he was not to be denied the joys of flight! We left his pup tent open to the flight cage and he bravely joined all of this year’s pups in the aerial circus that resembles a nightly fighter jet dogfight. He also flits around in the afternoon gliding like a butterfly before cleverly finding his way back to the pup tent for snacks!
We will closely monitor his skills to see if he is up to the fall migration, if not he’ll stay with us and enjoy hunting moths in the bat garden. Good pup Archie!
This bat had fallen into a back-porch bucket during all the rains last week. She managed to tread water ’till morning, when Matt & Christina found her and rescued her. We made sure her thumb claws were not damaged (luckily it was a plastic bucket), and then brought her out to the flight cage to make sure she could sustain flight. We tried a non-toxic tempura paint to ID her (it’s messy if they struggle and swat the paint brush) and you can still see a hint of red on her left ear as she is released back into the wild. Good bat, nice knowing you!
Elise found this pup on her doormat back of 18 July 2016 and, being the kind-hearted person she is, took the time to carefully contain the pup in a box (without touching it!) and call us. He was a very young juvenile who seemed to have let go of his bridge roost before he was quite ready. After weeks of blended mealworm dinners he was finally doing the wing stretches and one-arm pushups that let us know he’s ready to try again. So last night we brought him out to the aviary and after just a little encouragement, he took off and flutter-puttered all around the cage till we lost track of him in the darkness.
It’s really surprising just how slow the pups are when they first take flight. They have a puppy-like appearance with their little ears sticking straight up and a slightly alarmed expression on their faces. It’s so great to see them slowly gain confidence and soon start to shred the enclosure!
Thanks Elise! You’re simple act of kindness meant a lot to us, but it meant the world to this pup.
Elise’s pup