tri-colored bat

Pip Pup Release

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.
tri-colored bat
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!
tri-colored bat

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
tri-colored bat

Eyeballing a moth   1-1/2 months
tri-colored bat

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!

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Scruffy!

He’s a tri-colored juvenile who was learning to fly when he somehow ended up inside the atrium at 600 Congress Avenue in Austin.  So the Congress bats aren’t the only bats living in the heart of downtown! We have gotten tri-coloreds n from this area previously, so we suspect they are well at home in the high-rised parking garages and breezeways that shelter them from predators.


Box employees have a workout room that is open to the atrium, and this juvie spent the day on their jungle gym before Jo and Ian contained him and brought him to us for safer fledging.  Nice work you two!

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Pd positive Mexican free-tailed bat in Blanco County

The following is an article by Zeke MacCormack, a San Antonio Express-News staff writer:
Published in the San Antonio Express-News  April 5, 2018

Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from the Bracken Cave at dusk to foray for food on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. An estimated 20 million bats make Bracken Cave their home from March through November, making it the world's largest bat colony. MARVIN PFEIFFER/ mpfeiffer@express-news.net Photo: Marvin Pfeiffer, Staff / San Antonio Express-News / Express-News 2017

Photo: Marvin Pfeiffer, Staff / San Antonio Express-News
Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from the Bracken Cave at dusk to foray for food on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017.

 

In a double dose of troubling news, the fungus blamed for killing millions of East Coast bats since its discovery there in 2007 has been found in Central Texas and on a Mexican free-tailed bat — both firsts.

However, the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife announcement of those discoveries Wednesday noted that no Texas bats have been found exhibiting signs of the malady known as “white nose syndrome.”

“Biologists say it usually takes a few years after detecting the fungus for the disease to manifest,” said the release that identified four new Texas counties where Pseudogymnoascus destructans fungus had been found, bringing the total to 10.
It previously was found on cave bats, tri-colored bats and Townsend’s big-eared bats.

In the San Antonio region, the fungus was detected on bats at two sites in Kendall County and two sites in Blanco County.
Kendall County is now the southernmost location in the nation where researchers have discovered the fungus, which was first detected in Texas in 2017 in the Panhandle, officials said.
The deadly illness typically strikes hibernating bats, causing declines of winter populations by more than 90 percent in some locations.
So its presence in free-tailed bats, which migrate rather than hibernate, raises a new series of concerns.
“They migrate in huge populations all over the country so they could spread the disease much faster,” said Jonah Evans, a TPWD mammalogist
The Mexican free-tail bat carrying the fungus was found at the Old Tunnel State Park in Kendall County, he said.
Evans described researchers as shocked by the results of testing on skin swabs that were collected from bat wings and muzzles between December and last month by a coalition of biologists from Bat Conservation International, Texas A&M University’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences and its Natural Resources Institute.

“We were disappointed to see that it had moved southward as fast as it has,” Evans said. “We all expected it would move around the state, but it’s kind of shocking to see it happen this fast.”
The recent testing also found the fungus on bats in Foard and Wheeler counties, in North Texas, officials said.
The TPWD release said, “Because bats usually produce just one offspring per year, researchers are concerned it could take many decades for some populations to recover from a major decline.”
A widespread outbreak of the deadly disease in free-tailed bats could hold financial implications for agricultural producers who rely on the winged mammals to eradicate insects that feed on their crops.

The estimated value of bat pest control is $1.4 billion annually in Texas, the TPWD release says.
“Mexican free-tailed bats are key predators of agricultural pests in Texas, primarily moths that feed on corn and cotton,” said Mylea Bayless of Bat Conservation International.
“Since white nose syndrome is a disease of hibernating bats, we’re cautiously optimistic that Mexican free-tailed bats — which don’t hibernate — will fare better than other species in terms of contracting the disease and experiencing mortality from it,” she said.
The free-tailed bat also is an iconic presence, she said, drawing visitors watch them emerge by the millions from Bracken Cave just north of San Antonio, the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin and other major colonies.

“This bat is special to Texas, which is one of the reasons that this news is particularly distressing,” Bayless said Wednesday.
Beyond trying to track the spread of the fungus, she said, “Bat conservation International is working with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and others to explore and test potential treatments for white nose syndrome.”

Zeke MacCormack is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | zeke@express-news.net | @zekemac

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So long little pip, live long & happy

Love you little bat!  Go have a happy happy life!

Here’s a last look at you pre-release

You look so good up there! Look at all those quick darting moves! Are you showing us how happy you are to be wild and free?

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The Pip

Tiny but mighty! The smallest US bat, tri-coloreds are amazing flyers, powered by those rippling back muscles.

Austin bat presentations talks outreach programs education Congress Avenue Bridge

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Tri-colored bat hunting

One of our local species, the tri-colored bat is one of the smallest bats in North America.  They are amazingly agile in the air and this one has no trouble beating the larger bats to the flying insects in the aviary.

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Local Tri-colored

Went batting last night in East Austin.  Picked up mostly Tabr (Mexican free-tailed bats) around Mueller Lake Park.  Walking through an adjoining neighborhood with streets overhung with elm trees we picked up a beautiful call sequence from a tri-colored bat (Perymyotis subflavus), loud and clear.

We’ve released quite a few over the last year, one earlier this spring.  Wonder if that’s her?

tri-colored bat call sequence

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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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Tri-colored sonogram / sounds of silence

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.

Tri-colored bat sonogram & reference call

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.

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