April 20th
Visitors! Well, not been much up here. Playing hide and seek with transmitters when the weather is clear enough for us not to have a risk of soaking the electronics. Pam (Tom's significant other) is on spring break (she's a biology teacher) and came to hang out with us. She did masters work on fishing bats down in Latin America, so had some good stories and was familiar with bats. I also got one heck of a red eye shot of her with the digi-camera. I'm not sure I've ever seen red eye this impressive before.
The night of the 19th was the slowest night of the whole project, one bat! Moon was very bright and it was a bit chilly all day, other than the moon we don't have a very good explanation.
We also had a DCNR lead High School group from north of Allentown stop by to see our setup and get a look at some bats.
A large storm front is headed our way, catches tend to be high on the crest of storms, we have high hopes for tonight.
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The group observing the weighing and measuring of a Northern Longeared bat. |
PA DCNR Educator/Naturalist Karissa Riley |
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Tom and Neil prepare for the coming storm by rigging rain deflectors over the traps. |
Battening down the hatches. Is it a optical illusion or does Tom really not have a head? |
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Crystal Anderson (BCM's education specialist) demonstrating telemetry equipment. |
Beep, beep, beep. |
Although the research and surveys we do are a important component of bat conservation, education is really the key that leads to awareness and concern for preserving these species.
The HS crew left us just a few hours before our sodalis catches of the night. Two sodalis were caught, one female heavy weight at 6.1 grams was fitted with a Hollowhill transmitter, since this update is already pretty picture heavy see the 21st for the details.....
