Wednesday, July 23, 2014

When Last We Saw Little Brown Bat....

2:12 PM When we last saw  Little Brown Bat he was climbing the house, I assume so he could get out of the too hot sun and away from me.  Look at his beautiful eye.

2:12:06 PM Much closer to the eaves and shade now.
 2:12:09 PM  He gets his right foot up next to a right
 finger and PULLS!
2:12:25 PM  And he's made it round the corner.


2:12:35 PM  See him way way up there next to the eave spout? And he made the whole climb in less than 2 minutes.
 2:12:45 PM  What is Little Bat doing now?
2:12:51 PM  Little Brown Bat is TURNING!






Keep in mind the whole time he is doing all this...


...I'm down here.  I'm seeing him move but that's about all.  I've been cropping down the previous photos in a huge way to see what he's doing.
2:14:09 PM Now what?
2:14:30 PM  No more wiggling that I can see from the ground.


At this point I decide that Little Bat might like his own bat bath close by...just in case. And while I was at it, decided to grab my other camera that has a longer lens and maybe I could see what Little Bat was doing up there in the moment.
2:16:25 PM  Looks like he's sleeping quite peacefully.


3:34:24 PM  Still sleeping, but he's moved a little higher on the wall.
7:24:01 PM  Crapola!  Where did he go?
 7:24:24 PM There he IS!  Around the corner sleeping in the late day sun.
7:24:59 PM Out of the corner of my eye I see a very big bird fly by and swing the camera up.
A horrible picture but good enough for an identification.  Little Brown Bat and I had a mature Bald Eagle fly over us.
 7:30:51 PM Look how protuberant Little Bat's eyes are under his eyelids.
 8:31:40 PM Good grief!  Now where?
8:32:09 PM  Ah!  Around the corner masked  by the eaves spout...he's moving.
 8:32:14 PM Finger stretching down
8:32:19 PM  Ah Oh!  Little Bat is moving again.  I begin to wonder if  the click from the camera, the auto focus bouncing, or just my mere presence gets him going.
8:32:46 PM And around the corner he goes. 
8:52:59 PM  See him up there hanging by his feet in the corner?  Then the big surprise...another bat comes whipping out of the opposite corner of the roof on that wall.  WOW!  Has to be a hole up there somewhere.
8:54:27PM  Another one!  But they're too fast for the camera in this light to nab them.


8:55:02PM  I hear faint scratching and chittering but still can't catch the other bats with the camera.


 8:57:12 PM  Little Brown Bat stretches out his wings but still doesn't fly out.
9:00:26 PM   Little Bat starts crawling right.  More metallic scratching noises and chittering from the other bats, likely less than a dozen, making their way out of where ever they are
9:04:21 PM And then he was GONE!  One or two more bats came from the secret exit and they were done flying out to eat their 6000 mosquitoes per hour.  I didn't get a good count of the new bats but let's say conservatively that there were 10 and that they eat mosquitoes for 8 hours...that's 480,000 mosquitoes.

Glad I'd already ordered a 20 bat, bat house for Little Brown Bat.  He can invite a few more of his friends for daytime sleepovers.

Donegal Browne

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