April 15th

The heat is on.

The warm day seems to have gotten the bats a jump start. Catching fair numbers (the night of the 15th turned out to be our third largest catch night). The bats we are catching seem to be weighing more too. Still very low #'s of pips (1 last night) and fairly high on septentrionalis. Got a 6 gram longeared!!! I guess a couple of theories could apply.

1) Bats coming out now started with better fat reserves and were not forced out of hibernation too early.

2) Bats caught low weight earlier emerged (from here or elsewhere) too early and spent the last week burning their fat reserves out in the woods with nothing to eat (due to cold snap). (Possibly came out early due to the warm weather in mid-late March.)

3) Bats caught earlier were migrating to summer roost areas and use this tunnel as a stopover, so have been burning fat reserves migrating with a low prey base to eat along the way (due to week long cold snap).

If we don't get a sodalis in the next day or two that is suitable for a transmitter we are going to do a live run on a lucifugus or septentrionalis. So there should be some excitement later this week regardless of what the sodalis do.