Northern yellow pup echolocating
yellow bat
Northern yellow mum
Showing the pups how it’s done.
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.
Godzilla & Mothra
Northern yellow bats are awesome creatures. At 28.3 grams, she is three times the weight of the velifer in the upper right of the photo. Check out those beautiful broad wings. We’re so lucky to have them in Austin! Let’s help them out by not trimming the skirt of dead fronds under the green crown of our palm trees. They have evolved to blend in perfectly with that habitat. They feel so secure there, that they are slow to awaken from torpor, and often plummet to the ground when the dead fronds are trimmed.