April 14th

Warm night

Things are warming, looks like spring is going to burst out any day now. Saturday (tomorrow) is the first day of trout and it looks like that may be what heralds the change of season.

Bat activity still a bit slow tonight. Staying in the 40's all night bodes well for the near future. Past couple days we have been rotating people (go home! get a shower!) out and taking a break from the scout and test, scout and test routine. Sunday we will kick back into field tests, probably light up another transmitter and play hide and seek. This cold wet dreary weather has been stomping on our motivation levels, luckily better weather is right around the corner.

Transmitters have been a bit disturbing, the first test one died after 3 days, the second we didn't use much after the first few days, but it was stone dead on day ten. (We don't know when it died, but sometime between day 3 and 10.) We'll fire up another soon (did Sunday) and keep track daily as to it's status.

We snagged a TV/VCR combo from BCM world HQ and watched a few inspirational movies. John's new MAC does DVD's so it's a full theater experience. (Dry sarcasm.)

We have been doing a lot of thinking about the direction of bat movement (are they coming in or going out?) bats we marked with nail polish have not been coming back after the day they were marked. If released inside, they are staying there, and those released outside seem to have moved on. So far we have only captured marked bats the same night we mark them, (indicating they are not all learning to stay away from the traps) but not on subsequent nights.

Our color range for marking. As gaudy as we could get in quick-dry.

We have been trying to release bats on the side of the traps that they want to be on, (inside on cold nights) outside early in the evening or on warm nights). I guess the lack of recaptures indicates we have been doing a fair job of guessing where they want to be and that they are staying there.