bat

Tri-colored South Austin

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.

Tri-colored bat at Austin Bat Refuge

We checked her out under UV light and no florescence showed up that would indicate Pd, the fungus that causes White-nose Syndrome.

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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.

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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!

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Toe whiskers

Here’s an angle rarely seen of a Mexican free-tailed bat. If you look closely you can see the long “whisker” hairs sticking out between the toes. “Kind of like you honey” a bridge visitor said to his girlfriend this summer, right before she hit him, hard.

Mexican free-tailed bat

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Built for Speed

Mexican free-tailed bat

Mexican free-tailed bats are built for speed.  Their long narrow wings are just one of the adaptations that rank them among the fastest bats.
They are, however, also remarkably agile in tight spaces.  They use bone structure and muscle fibers to change their wing aspect ratio to short and broad, allowing high maneuverability when necessary.

Mexican free-tailed bat

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Moth mystery

We’ve always wondered why every morning we find whole moths floating in the water of the drinking trough, in the bat garden.  These are whole moths, not just the wings we would expect to find, when bats catch the moths, shuck the wings, and eat the rest.
So why so many whole, often live, moths in the water?
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moths, bats, austin bats

bats, moths, austin bats

Here a Seminole bat controls a moth

Last night we finally got proof of what we suspected to be the reason.
We have a blacklight that attracts insects into the garden. It hangs from the center ridge of the aviary and is directly over the drinking pool. The pool is also situated in the center so that it collects the drips from the misters, which are also hung from the center ridge.
Our flight school bats fly in wide circles that are tangent to the light, so that they can catch any moth that happens to be flying at the wrong place at the wrong time. When they catch one, they curl up into a ball as they fly, to control the moth and bring it up to their mouths.
If one watches a moth circle under the light, within seconds a bat will zoom in and snatch the moth.
Last night we watched while evening bats did just that. bats, moths, austin bats

bats, moths, austin bats
But in between catches of fluttering moths, we noticed times where moths we were watching, just before a bat swooped in, would fold their wings and plummet downwards, splash-landing in the pool!
We have often heard of moths evolving defenses to counter the amazing bio-sonar the bats employ to hunt them. This arms race has been going on since bats developed echolocation around 25 million years ago, and has manifested in countless ways ever since. Some moth species have it hard-wired in their DNA that, upon hearing bat bio-sonar, their synapses fire in such a way that paralyzes their wings, causing them to plummet downward, away from the bats closing trajectory. This seems to work quite well, unless the moths just happen to be over our bat drinking trough!
So now we know why so many moths are found each morning in the pool! We just may move the light location so that these moths land in the garden instead, and rise once more to provide additional foraging opportunities for our bats as they hone their hunting skills. This will be a big benefit when we have a full house of bats in flight school, with not enough moths to go around.
We love these little insights that nightly observation provides in the aviary!

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Summer Intern Graduates – 2016

Kyndal Irwin Intern Summer 2016

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!”

austin bat refuge rehabilitation release rescue

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Archie!

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!
Archie 2

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Free-tail release

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!

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Now for the evening bats

The aviary seems huge now that most of this year’s class has graduated from flight school. But now that they’re not grabbing all the visual attention, we can better analyze the skills of the more cryptic species, such as this evening bat, to decide who else is ready for release.

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Kendalia bat from Linda Garriot

evening bats nycticeius humeralis austin bats rescue rehabilitation release

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