Night had fallen in the orchard, but the stars were shining in the sky. It was nearing 2am and we had caught no bats so the bat team decided to start taking shifts to sleep. As Dan and Liz headed off to the house for their 4 hour break, Kristen and I set off to check the mist-nets. As we were walking in the dark, I noticed a very large branch, turned around to warn Kristen and in the process proceeded to trip over the branch myself. I tumbled to the ground as my pants caught on the branch and ripped a gigantic hole in the bottom of my pants (a few expletives may or may not have escaped my mouth in the process). Kristen was practically rolling on the ground laughing and I thought I was about to pee my pants.

Once we finally made it to the nets, we were shocked to find 4 bats. As we began to lower the nets to extract the bats, 2 more flew in! We couldn’t believe it. Naturally, once everyone went to sleep we were swamped with bats that were entangled in our nets. Kristen is not up to date on her rabies vaccines so I was left to take them out all on my own. It took at least 30mins for me to free all of them. Fortunately, an hour later the two of us were able to take a short nap, but then we had to wake up and help process the bats and release them.

I don’t think I have ever explained what processing a bat entails. When we catch a bat in the net, we place them in a cloth bag and keep them for 2 hours in the hopes that they will poop. Guano is one way we can determine what the bat is eating and we can also do hormone assays to look at the levels of sex hormones. After the two hours, we collect the guano, take a measurement of the forearm, mass the bat, determine the species; sex; and reproductive status of the bat (pregnant, lactating, etc), take a hair sample, put a band on their wing for identification, and take a section of their wing for DNA samples. (I will write more about this later…I just found out I have to wake up very early so I need to get to sleep).

The nets had been set up next to the bat house, so in the morning (about 6am) we watched the bats returning to the roost as we took down the nets. In the morning they tend to swoop around the bat house and fly back and forth with one another. No one is quite sure why they do this and it is something I hope to study as part of my project. I should be starting my specific research in June. We will also be radio tracking in June, which requires two cars following the bats at night in an attempt to determine where the bat is foraging. We do this all night until about noon to determine where the bats are roosting. Then we can start from the roost and follow them again. It will be exhausting work, but can’t you just picture me following a bat in a car at night?! Oh it will be great!!