Earth Day Austin 2016
The love radiating from the crowd on Earth Day really moved us.
Thanks so much for caring about bats!
release
Hoary bat / rainy day pine cone
Look like a pine cone to you? That’s what this beautiful hoary bat wants you to think. Let’s see who she really is!
hoary bat pine cone
Found on the ground at the University of Texas and brought to us by Carin Peterson and Rachel Ellerd of UT Animal MakeSafe
The following is our favorite impression of this bat. Wonderful photo by Carin Peterson.
hoary bat sloth slat bloth eskimo parka bat
hoary bat
hoary bat
Imagine how different this map view must have looked to her with all the night lighting, as she flew through on her spring migration. According to Bats of Texas by Ammerman et al 2012, hoary bat females have been documented as traveling as far as 1800 km during their migration. What caused her to end up grounded at 2317 Speedway on the UT campus? She seems completely alert and healthy. Had she been looking for a drink from the Turtle Pond?
Did the lights disorient her as she was migrating to her summer grounds up north? Maybe she was feeding around the lights on campus and not having much luck.
UT hoary bat’s eye view
She was emaciated and even after 3 cc’s of blended mealworms we could still see her backbone through her belly. She’s likely pregnant (since mating season is in the fall for hoary bats) so she must have been ravenous and could have ended up on the ground weak from hunger.
Was she migrating with a group of other females? The males don’t travel with the females to the summer grounds, they summer in the western states while the females head north and east.
hoary bat first night in flight cage
The first night in the flight cage she flew but not for long. Just one trip down and one trip back, so we don’t know if she sustains flight.
hoary bat flight cage
She did love being outdoors, even in the rain. She didn’t seek shelter when the heavy rains came in so she was pretty cold and wet in the morning, but no worse for the wear.
hoary bat flight cage
Her forearm length of 57 mm is at the top of the range for this species (46-58 mm) and her body length from nose to base of tail of 90mm is also above the average 80 mm. This is what we would expect since females are larger than males. However, her weigth of 27.8g is not as high on the scale (20-35 g) as we would expect given her length. Her body/mass index of 0.49 seems substantial, but the eyeball test says she seems in need of a few more good meals. A rough measure of her wingspan, performed by stretching one wing out and doubling the nose to tip measurement, came out around 400 mm or about 15-3/4″. We obviously did not stretch the wing completely out, just as much as we could without causing discomfort this being a live bat and not a specimen, so this is probably quite a bit shorter than what we might expect to find.
It’s striking to us that her feet (11 mm) are so much larger and stronger than other Lasiurans.
hoary bat flight cage
hoary bat in pine tree
hoary bat in pine tree
hoary bat in pine tree
hoary bat in pine tree
One night later, she’s flying now
Look at that beautiful golden fur all the way out past her wrists
hoary bat flying
According to Bats of Texas, Ammerman et al 2012, hoary bats represented 41% (1,023 of 2,486) of all bat fatalities at wind-energy facilities. Males represent an even higher proportion (89%) of bats killed at Rocky Mountain wind farms (Kuntz et al. 2007), most of those adult males during fall migrations (Arnett et al 2008).
She has quite a task ahead of her making it up to the north country and raising her pups this summer. We hope we can set her back on track after her Austin pit stop.
She’s lightning fast so photos are tough to get without a painstaking setup. But even though it’s blury, this photo really shows the magnificent sweep of her downstroke
She’s still only 28.1 grams soaking wet this morning.
This shot shows the pigment of her upper wing membrane changes color corresponding to the glorious fur under her wing.
It’s hard to believe the “pinecone” can drop from the branch and become this amazing flying dynamo.
hoary bat Swiss chard
Here’s a photo of our girl as she leaped out of the hand to resume her migration. We set her back on course headed northeast over Mueller Lakes last night. We are thrilled we were able to participate in her recovery after she was rescued by Carin Peterson and Rachel Ellerd at UT Animal MakeSafe. After a week or so of good meals, her weight increased from 27 grams to around 33 grams at the time of release, so she will be well fortified to journey up through Arkansas to her summer grounds in the northeast where she’ll give birth and raise her two pups.
Give us a wave when you and the pups pass overhead this fall sweetheart, it was great getting to know you!
hoary bat release
P.S. – On your way north you might see some big revolving things that look like maybe they are trees you could feed around. They are wind turbines! We know you are inquisitive, but please just stay away from them. And tell the kids!
Decontamination Protocol 2016
This is the April 2016 white-nose syndrome protocol
white-nosed syndrome protocols 2016
Hungry Bats
14Apr2016 UTC click at left for video
Frio & Bracken bats cover at least 40 miles in an hour in this video (link above left). Mexican free-tailed bats are capable of flying over twice that fast in unassisted flight. The location of both caves at the edge of the Texas Hill Country (dark grey at top) gives the bats immediate access to the agricultural fields that attract their favorite food, the corn ear-worm moth.
Could be as many as ~8 million at Bracken and ~6 at Frio, and this is just a snapshot in time, not the whole emergence!
Stuart bat cave and then Rucker emerge later at top left of video.
WNS jumps the Rockies
From the US Fish & Wildlife Service
“It is with heavy hearts that we announce today the confirmation of white-nose syndrome in the state of Washington. This detection is about 1,300 miles from areas where white-nose syndrome has been confirmed in Minnesota and where the fungus has been found in Nebraska.”
https://www.whitenosesyndrome.org/what-can-you-do-help
Udated “Cave Advisory”
Updated “Cave Advisory”: Recommendations for managing access to subterranean bat roosts to reduce the impacts of white-nose syndrome in bats
https://www.whitenosesyndrome.org/sites/default/files/resource/final-cave_access_advisory_2016_2.pdf
Recommendations to reduce the potential for humans to disturb hibernating bats or inadvertently transport the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome to uncontaminated bat habitats. This guidance was produced by the interagency national response to white-nose syndrome through the White-nose Syndrome Disease Management Working Group.
Releasing a Bat
I just had an amazing experience releasing a rehabilitated bat. They are so tiny! She was eager to join the party at Congress Bridge. Thanks Lee and Dianne. Your passion and love for bats is inspiring. Thank you for the great service you give to the Austin community and especially the bats!
The dark
- “After thousands of years, we’re still strangers to darkness, fearful aliens in an enemy camp with our arms crossed over our chests.” Annie Dillard
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.”
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.
