Bat House Forum

[Dave Miller]

Hey Gang,

I have volunteered to lead three evening bat walks starting in a few weeks. I helped lead one last summer, but this will be my first solo. I will have an expert birder with me to point out the bird life, but I am the only person with detailed knowledge on our bats.

I will have my bat detector and a small speaker so everyone can listen to the bats. I did this last summer and it was a huge hit.

If you have led (or been on) a bat walk, can you give me any tips or lessons learned?

Thanks,

Dave

[Terry Lobdell]

Dave,
I've done lots of programs on bats and have led emergence counts at dusk but have not led a night time bat walk. I guess if I were I would just cover the basic questions........there is usually a wide range of people that come to my talks.......from people who already know about and appreciate bats to some who are curious and afraid of bats........over the years I have come to see less fear of bats which is great! In July I did a talk and my first question to the 40+/- people was "Is anyone here afraid of bats?" Not a single hand went up! So progress is definitely being made in bat conservation these days!
Hope it goes well for you!

[Joe Spencer]

Looking forward to how it goes Dave!

[Dave Miller]

I led the first of three bat walks last night. It went well, although the bat activity was a little low. It was about 20 degrees cooler than it has been lately, plus it was a little breezy so I think that is why there weren't many bats out. But we did see and hear a few. We did not see many birds (owls) which was a disappointment.

I put a Y connector from the bat detector output so I could record the bat detector as well as send it to a speaker for the group to hear. I'll see if I can post some snippets.

While we were walking along the detector picked up something on the ground, making a lot of loud ultrsonic noise. It was some kind of creature (probably insect) because it would stop when we were looking for it, then start again. But we never did see what it was, even though we picked through the grass pretty carefully. So it must have either been something really small, or something underground. Bizarre.

I asked everyone to leave their flashlights off which made it pretty neat to be out there with no lights. The trail is very flat so there is no tripping hazard. Last summer when I helped lead, the leader gave everyone a flashlight, which was a mistake. Every time we saw or heard something, all 25 people shined their flashlights on it causing it to immediately fly away. So I asked people not to use their flashlights.

[Dave Miller]

Well all three walks had very low wildlife activity, including bats. The most we saw in one walk was 4 bats. It has been really dry here lately, perhaps that had something to do with it?

I brought my audio recorder with me each time, here are a couple of clips: 1) bats 2) insect making ultrasonic noise.

http://soundcloud.com/daveincamas/sets/ ... ltrasonic/

It is clear that there is a whole world of ultrasonic wildlife communication & navigation at night, that we have no clue about.