release

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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Little Guy “LG”

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.

LG Copyright
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.

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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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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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Yellow bat release

Vibrant young newcomers to the wild Austin nightlife scene, five shining stars took their rightful place in the sky last night. Dianne Odegard does the honors as the last of this year’s yellow pups wings her way off into the night, surveying her new domain and a possible palm tree roost.

austin bats rehabilitation release yellow bats lasiurus intermedius

Di & yellow bat at Poquito Creek

austin bats rehabilitation release yellow bats lasiurus intermedius

Yellow soaring up to the stars

austin bats rehabilitation release yellow bats lasiurus intermedius

home sweet home for our yellows (we hope)

 

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Leaf bat release

What a great release last night! Such a joy to see them leap from the pup tent and circle above us in the twilight! We’ll miss their nightly insect hunting competition in the flight cage, but our hearts and minds go with them as they soar the night skies, ranging as high and wide as their hearts desire, flying wild and free! Indelible memories little bats, thanks so much!
Oh and your’re not quite ready to go yet sweetheart? Then you can stay with us, we’ll try again later.

rehabilitation release bats austin rescue DSC_1067 DSC_1074 (3) rehabilitation release austin bats DSC_1093

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4th of July fireworks – Annual spooking of the bats

For the Congress Avenue Bridge bats, the scariest time of year is 4th of July, when the annual fireworks display takes place just a few hundred yards to the east of the bridge.  The bats are emerging at dark this time of year, exactly at the time the fireworks start.  The emergence peaks around 9:30 pm this time of year, just when the fireworks are reaching their crescendo, seen in yellow on the left.
We normally see greatly reduced emergences for a number of days after the 4th.

4th of July 2016

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The Face

Hours old new-born Mexican free-tailed bat pup.

The face that gets hundreds of millions of Central Texas mums out of the roost each evening to go to work in the agricultural fields.

Check out that cute little nursing nose; like all mammals, makes it easier to nurse and makes the pups even more irresistable.

newborn Tabr use this one

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