Bitten by bats

So last night was our first bat survey. We only caught 11, but damn that was enough for my inexperienced hands...the silver haired bats are especially aggressive. I still haven't gotten a bat out of a net by myself yet - all ours last night were heavily entangled and I'm so scared to hurt them! Of course it doesn't help when you have a squirming open-mouthed protesting bat that latches onto one's fingers - fingers that you'd rather be using to untangle the net from around it. For the species that are difficult to distinguish from one another, we record their calls so they can be identified by those. It's rather ridiculous - in order to record the call, it helps to see the bat and where it's going, so we have these little 1.5 inch glow sticks that we glue stick onto the bat's belly (they can later be picked off by the bat). I released several bats equipped with these last night. We didn't get back to the office until 2:30.

The site was beautiful though - a stream out in the sagebrush surrounded by juniper and pine covered hills. I heard bears! It reminded me of Lost Lake. Saw a big brightly colored garter snake which I kept scaring into the water while setting up nets. Possible muskrat burrows, and night hawks circling. The bugs were terrible! I have never been so inundated with bugs flying around (and into) my face - it made processing the bats a challenge. It doesn't help that we have headlamps of course.