April 4th

Let the ice age come again.

Well todays update is going to be short. Most of my web time went into writing the page on harp traps. We did more work on orienteering and establishing search routes. Tom established all his points and drove his entire circuit on the west half of the project area. Crystal went out and checked 20 or 30 more on the east side. With a cold front moving in for two days then out in time for the weekend we figure good odds we start tracking Saturday or Sunday, so today was laundry, camp re-stock, a take a breather day.

Cold set in early at 9pm it was 32 degrees, catching lots of bats, we believe mainly going INTO the tunnel. (Our purchacing division is looking into longwave infrared video cameras for future projects of this sort. We caught a big brown, released it outside the tunnel, and caught it again. (let it go in the tunnel that time) All bats caught at or after 11pm are being released on the inside of the tunnel, we will see them again, but it looks like they want to be inside for the night. On the other side of the ridge there is 3 or 4 inches of snow, at our location we have a covering, but nothing to be measured in inches.

As of 11pm we had 15 bats, 1 Big Brown (E. fuscus)(caught twice), 3 Little Browns (M. lucifugus), 11 Northern Longeared (M. spetentrionalis).

What I want to know, is what's up with the predominance of long eareds? Did they move from hibernaculas back onto the ridge (thier summer habitat?) and are now sheltering in the tunnel till it gets warm enough to stay in trees? Or were they in the site all along? I know the winter hibernacula data didn't give me any indication that we would be seeing this many......