A New Bat! or maybe not...

I took a walk with Bill on August 12, 2013, out our goldenrod-spangled meadow. It was a misty, dewy morning and everything was shrouded in moisture.

There's an old slot box standing three quarters of the way out the meadow. It's made of Nebraska barn siding, raises two broods of bluebirds each season, and when it's done with that the bats have a chance at it. Opening that box in late summer and fall is way better than Christmas morning for me. 

It just looks like a place a bat might hide, doesn't it? 

"I'm going to peek in this box and see if there's a bat in there," I said to Bill.

And there was. I am forever suppressing screams, and this was one of those times.

For there was a quivering, perfect, pink-faced, wide-eyed batlet inside. Silent SQUEEE!!

The white mass is probably a jumping spider egg case. Ooh, he was tiny!

A distinctly mousy look to this face. I knew I'd not seen a bat face like this before. With bats, it's very subtle. Identifying characteristics include color of facial skin, the degree of inflatedness of muzzlepuffs (big browns, for instance, have very inflated looking muzzlepuffs, while little browns don't). Ear size, color and contrast of fur--see the whitish underparts? You don't see that on either of the brown bats.

Bill took the above photos with his iPhone and we moved some way off to squee and hug and high-five and jump up and down. I had my suspicions that we'd just nabbed a life bat, for us and for the sanctuary. 

I thought about that bat all day. Did some riffling through field guides, and finally decided it must be an eastern pipistrelle, with that pink muzzle and bare eye skin, those long, upswept ears and that multicolored fur. As much as I hated to disturb it twice in a single day, I was afraid that it might be a one-day wonder. Bill said, "Better go back before twilight and get more pictures." Right. Because when does the Science Chimp get a chance like this?

Perimyotus subflavus, the eastern pipistrelle, is the only member of its genus. It is not a true pipistrelle (Pipistrellus), but rather something different, and the monotypic genus reflects this. Science Chimps love monotypic genera.

I headed back out the dimming meadow. Early goldenrod abloom everywhere. Or maybe it's tall goldenrod. I have little conversance with goldenrods. Too busy with birds, bugs, bats. If forced, I can key them out. Mostly I just look at them.

Tall ironweed has been competed out by sumac in this dynamic meadow, but a few persist.

I approached the box with great excitement. Opened it and found the bat in a classic head-down roost position. Oh, perrrfect!

Once again, I called my iPhone into play, because its macro capabilities simply outstrip my beloved Canon G-12. I had to have a camera that would reliably focus on the bat, flash free, in a low-light situation, so I wouldn't come away with a sharp picture of the edge of the box, for instance, with a blurry brown mass inside. You can touch the item of desire on the screen of your iPhone, asking it to focus just on that. So I pointed the phone camera at the bat, touched the bat's image, and the camera focused on the bat. Boom.

I was delighted to get some detail on the tragus, the process in the ear that helps baffle wind and channel sound. Eastern pipistrelles have a broad tragus, unlike the sharply pointed tragus of a big brown bat, or the rounded one of a little brown. All that bare skin on the face and around the eye is a pipistrelley thing.

Do not be alarmed by the white dust on the batlet. It's feather dust from a recently fledged brood of bluebirds. There are probably also some mites in there. Itchy!

This is a video in which nothing happens, except some whispered endearments, ear swiveling, and rapid breathing. That's enough for me. I thought you'd like to see an eastern pipistrelle, alive and quivering, and hear the crickets and katydids in our autumnal meadow.

So come on. Squee with me!

UPDATE: Facebook is a marvelous thing. For instance, I'm Facebook friends with the person who wrote and illustrated Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Field Guide to Mammals of North America. Her name is Fiona Reid. And after I posted a link to this blogpost, I got this comment from Fiona.

Fiona Reid Hi Julie, sorry to burst your bubble 'n all, but that ain't no pipistrelle, It is definitely a Myotis. Could be little brown or northern Long-eared (which tends to be a bit paler around eye and underside, but it is quite hard to separate these two species in hand let alone by photos). Pips have much pinker faces and ears, plus they have tricolor fur, light/dark/light, the wing bones are pinkish and thumbs also pinkish.

And it did burst my bubble, a little, not because it's not a new species for me, but mostly because I despair of ever being able to tell one durn bat from another. This bat's forearms and face look really pink to me. I can't really say whether the fur looks tricolored. The tragus looks longer than it probably should be for a pipistrelle (here, the Kaufman Focus Guide to Mammals of North America shows that better). But I gladly yield to Fiona's expertise. Whether it's a pipistrelle or a Myotis, it's a little gift and a miracle, and it's in our bluebird box. It will be loved and welcomed no less for being something other than a pipistrelle. It's a bat and I'm still all asquee!

Oklahoma Cave Bats

The Cimarron River, Oklahoma. I felt I'd been dropped in the middle of a Clint Eastwood Western, the landscape was so different and so grand.


What lies beneath this foreboding landscape? A beautiful cavern.

I can't describe how wonderful it was to be shown around Oklahoma by people who love her. Debby Kaspari and Tim Ryan know Oklahoma in all her moods (boy, do they!). They've got the birds and wildlife and landscapes down cold. They've got all her quirks and peculiarities filed away, ready to pull them out at a moment's notice. So as soon as the Lesser Prairie-chicken Festival was over and my last workshop had been given, we took off on a little expotition.

First stop was Alabaster Caverns. I hadn't been in a real cave since I was a girl, dazzled by the colored lights in Luray Caverns in Virginia. What a treat it was to descend into this wonderland--a gypsum cavern, peopled by fantastic mineral formations and my new favorite mammal, bats!

Originally mined for gypsum, which is used in wallboard among other things, the cavern's owner realized he was sitting on a natural wonder, and he opened it to the public. You can still see the miners' graffiti on the wall. The lead in Orlando's pencil inscribed the soft gypsum, and halted any further deposition, so his signature remains perfectly clear since around the turn of the 20th century, while the other graffiti have grown over with minerals. I had the notion that this cave was alive.
Being a bit of a claustrophobic, I was happy to see the cavern pretty well-lit.

The idea of going into the bowels of the earth, straight back and down, gave me the wilhelms. But the lighted banister, which was pleasantly warm to the touch in the dank cavey air, helped immensely. I didn't let go of it except to take photos. Some passages were pleasantly large and high-ceilinged, while others were a bit narrower. But all were surpassingly beautiful.
There were some truly gorgeous formations and crystals.

The little visitor's center had the most extraordinary skellington of a Mexican free-tailed bat. I looked at those straw-fine wingbones and marveled that my Dee Dee hadn't broken every bone in her body blundering around in our basement. (Still haven't heard how the flight tests went, by the way. Still waiting to know if she'll be releasable, since the distal tips of her first three fingers on each wing got broken, so her wings curve under.) UPDATE--11:04 pm, May 23--Dee Dee is off meds and doing well in flight tests, finally extending her wings all the way and getting more lift. Lisa Fosco, Director of Animal Care at Ohio Wildlife Center, hopes for quicker progress now. Cross your fingers for Dee Dee's fingers!

Isn't that the most exquisite little flying DaVinci machine? Look at those shoulders! and the hair-fine spurs on the heels, which support the flight membranes. It was so very tiny, a miracle.

I was all in a lather to see some bats, and finally we spotted a lovely pair of cave myotis, a life bat for me!
I think our guide was pleasantly surprised by the ecstasy with which I greeted this sighting, having inured herself to the fearful reactions of so many thousands of cave tourists.

I angled around until I could shoot into their little squinched up faces.
You have to love that, all cuddled up in the cool cave for the winter.

I have to take an interlude here, much as I want to stay in the light.

Bat Conservation International announced on May 12, 2010, that white nose fungus has been found on a western Oklahoma cave myotis, a species which commonly winters with Mexican freetail bats. Each new species affected by this deadly disease, which has killed at least a million bats in the East, increases the potential range and devastation of this horrible epizootic. A leap from Tennesse and Missouri all the way to Oklahoma?? This is what happens when flying animals are attached by an epizootic. Infection in Mexican freetails could spread white nose syndrome from coast to coast and well into Mexico. Bats desperately need our help, as scientists race to learn more about this dreadful disease, which is leaping like wildfire into Tennessee, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and now Oklahoma. It also spread northward into Ontario and Quebec in Canada. Bats across the continent are at imminent risk.

I didn't treat white nose syndrome in my series of bat posts last winter. My heart couldn't face it. Still can't, really, but it's what's happening. As we look at the possible extinction of entire bat species, I feel the planet wobbling.

We spotted an eastern pipistrelle, a truly teeny weeny little animal, delicate as a fairy.
It was about the size of a silver dollar. Here, I'll flip it around so you can see its face and its charmingly pointed eartips.

It was so very good to see my friends again. I knew when I saw them and my heart started singing again that bats will always be in my life. How I wish I could throw a shield over them and protect them.