After our visit to Campanario, we headed back to the Firestone Center in Baru, Costa Rica.  The route took us by the sea cave where we had previously done some work, so decided to give it a bit more attention, with installation of the ammonia sampler as well.  We only had to go into the chamber with the big bat colony once for this, so figured it would add a lot of data to our bat cave work without much bat disturbance and could just use red headlamp lights for the roost work.

First up is Guy with his contraption for automatic sampling of ammonia over the course of a programmable time frame.  This thing worked flawlessly in what can be called less than ideal conditions.

​

We also did more carbon dioxide sampling at various places in the cave.  

And finally, the airflow.  It is one thing to have a set of numbers placed on a surveyed map which show things at this point or that point, but it is even better to have those numbers with an idea of why they are what they are.  By using smoke from a vaping machine that Guy created we could essentially map the airflow patterns and speed without introducing anything harmful to the cave environment.  

And, well, that is going to have to be all for now.  I will finish blogging this trip after I return home as while it has been difficult at times to do so from here, after tonight it is impossible to add more.  But we have been to some pretty interesting places, and still have two days to go, so look for a continuation of posts in a couple days to catch up on the final bits from the trip.

So for our last night at Campanario, Guy and I decided to just head over to the spot above the cave with the benches and watch the bat flight.  This is just a really nice way to have a great wildlife experience while the sun goes down and darkness arrives.  Birds stop calling and frogs start up.  Day insects find a hidey hole and the night insects come out.  And the bats wake up and fly out of the cave.

Okay, I gotta say here that "bats wake up" is a bit of a mystery to me.  I have been in hundreds of tropical bat caves and at any point, with lights out and even before they know I'm nearby, they always seem to be awake.  Cave bat colonies are never quiet and sometime really quite loud.  You can turn your light off and sneak up on them from a long ways off with a dim red light and still hear them making a racket three turns of the cave passage before you get there.  Makes me wonder if the bats ever actually sleep.

Okay, back to the cave.  Earlier, we had seen a black hawk sitting on a downed tree with bats flying by trying to score a late evening snack.  I never got a photo of it going after a bat but it clearly wanted one.

So as it was getting pretty dark, with just a hint of yellow-orange in the clouds out on the ocean horizon, I took one last Campanario Bat Cave Photo.  I end this set of blog posts with a Pteronotus flying out from the cave and passing between me and the ocean.  A flash went off in the night, and Guy and I headed back to the Station.

​

The owner of the Campanario Biological Station, Nancy Aitken, decided that since we had the cave entrance rigged it would be an opportunity for her to check on her bats personally.  Nancy is amazing in a lot of ways, truly one of the best of the best, but most of her visits to the cave are for taking students and other visitors to the station to see the bat flight in the evening from benches above the entrance, not going down to the cave.

The cave itself is, for the most part, a place very few should visit.  The wildlife watching opportunity outside the entrance, is something not to be missed.  The cave is obviously an important breeding site for Pteronotus in Costa Rica, and for the most part they will continue to do just fine without anyone entering the cave.  While watching the bat flight is really fun and doesn't bother the bats at all.  It's a win-win.

So we went out one afternoon at low tide, and after finishing up with our work and pulling out Guy's ammonia sampler, Nancy got to check on her bats.  Now I am not going to tell you her age, but let's just say most with that many candles on their cake would not be dropping down a rope to visit a hot, stinky cave with the surf pounding away on the rocks just a few feet away.  Actually most anyone, of any age, race, gender, country of origin, or shoe size would not visit this place voluntarily.  But here is Nancy climbing out after getting a look at the cave and the bats.  Truly remarkable lady in every way.

And, just really want to thank Nancy here for all her wonderful hospitality.  She made this part of our trip work super smoothly and was just wonderful to hang out with and hear her stories.  Hope to return and spend more time out there at some point as Campanario was a real treat to visit.

Anytime we are out, any chance to find some more bats is a worthy goal.  Nancy told us that they had seen bats inside a hollow tree on the property so we decided to hike out there and take a look.  

No, that isn't really a Keebler Elf, but our hero Don McFarlane crawling in.  Access is through what is actually a hollow root, that leads to a cavity in the middle of the tree.  Sadly there were no bats, nor did he run into any of the myriad of fun critters that could have been living in such a place.

At the end of the cave one comes to a climb of maybe 8 feet.  This looks climbable, although not super easy.  But we ran into what might more be called a biological obstacle.  The entire climb was covered with a mountain of baby bats.  Lots and lots of baby bats.  

I was the first one into the cave when we got here so as to be able to assess what was going on with the bats.  There is a kinda low-ish spot right before the final room where you then stand up and are almost eye to eye with a whole lot of bat pups.  Odd the pups were down this low instead of on the ceiling, but...  It certainly was hot enough even down that low.  We took a temperature reading on the ceiling where the huge colony of adults was and it was a stunning 99.7 degrees F.  

There are three known species of bats in the cave, all in the genus Pteronotus.  I may be able to tell which species this pup mountain consists of, but that will wait until I get home and can work out the structures that separate them using the macro photos as I didn't handle any bats as that wasn't our purpose here.

Oh, macro photos?  Let's take a look at the bats from just a little closer.

​

And just to show how absolutely adorable baby bats are, let's get right in close

Okay, just one quick image of the ceiling roost as well.  Of note, that is almost all I've got in the way of such images.  In a cave that hot, with humidity almost certainly 100%, camera lenses fog up very fast.  Plus their is a rather unpleasant rain in the cave, that is the rain created as all those bats are peeing and pooping and you are in between it and the floor.  Suffice it to say that when I went in to specifically photograph the whole colony, which takes three photos, I came out absolutely covered in, well, unpleasant stuff.  But also so was my camera and camera lens and flash covered.  Spent quite a while cleaning things later but still had to abandon one lens filter as it won't be clean enough to use again until after I get home.

So here is one of the shots looking up before everything was covered in fog and bat droppings.  

The first thing we did upon arrival at Campanario was to take a walk to the bat cave and rig a rope for access.  It's a sea cave so we really weren't sure how easy (or not) it would be to get in there.

At the entrance Guy rigged a rope that could be used either for rappelling or as a handline depending on how difficult it would be.  Sometimes rocks can be quite slippery, and nice to have the rappel option.  Don gave it a quick try and found that it worked okay as a handling as things weren't slick and there were a few foothold in there.

The other key factor here would be how much water comes in when a big wave hits.  It was mid-tide and so generally dry, but we quickly learned that it would be best to plan on getting wet.

From this little bit, we decided to mostly try and time our visits to the cave around low tide.  

Not too much to say here.  These were the only bats we saw in any of the other sea caves we visited today besides the one with the big bat roost.  They appear to be in the genus Carollia, but can't do a species on them as I did not handle them and measure stuff.

​

Don McFarlane, who honestly owns and wears a kilt at times, organized this bit of madness to Costa Rica.  We are looking at a number of relatively small caves with relatively high levels of bat populations, bad air and bad chemistry.  For a renowned caver I must say this is one of his more hairbrained ideas.  Yet here I am and looking forward to every bit of it.

Today's mission was to a cave in southwestern Costa Rica, a sea cave, with a bat population of around 800 individuals of three species (all in the Pteronotus genus).  There just aren't all that many caves here, so the bats that need caves can really pile into even a small cave that fits their needs.

While we have visited this cave before, this time was mostly just to retrieve a data logger that was placed in the bat roost.  No big deal, just go in, get slopped in the guano muck, and get out with the tiny bit of electronics that has been recording atmospheric data for many months.

However...this time the tide was several feet lower than we have ever seen it, and we were able to walk down a beach that was previously pounding waves on a sheer cliff face.  To our surprise and good luck, there were more caves.

One was a tunnel that cuts through the rock somewhat parallel to the beach.  Beautiful, but not too exiting for bats or other cave stuff.

Another of the caves had the usual joint-controlled main passage going in straight from the shore, but there was a little bit of apparently phreatic passage going off on both the strike and the dip of the rock (the dip passage is behind Don and not visible)

After hiking the beach that wasn't there last time we visited, we finally went back and retrieved the data logger in the bat cave.  And, for one more bit of science Don mapped the carbon dioxide levels in the cave from the entrance to the bat roost.  As expected, CO2 was much higher at the roost.

Probably a bit about this photo is needed here as well.  This is Don, holding a CO2 sniffer, below the bat roost.  And while it looks like it is snowing, that's not exactly the case here.  All those white spots are either fungal gnats or Tineidae moths (no way I can really tell).  Fine, but they are attracted to light so a caving headlamp essentially is a great way to attract them into your eyes or up your nose.  Such fun.

Otherwise, there were numerous giant cockroaches on the floor and it was raining in the cave.  No, not water rain, but just think about standing under 800 small mammals and you get the idea of what was raining down.

And...looking up from where don was standing I took a quick snapshot.  The bats are just carpeting the top of the fissure.

Just a quick pic of a small, cute bat.  Small-footed bats only run about 5 grams in weight, or roughly the weight of two pennies.  Really!  Quite agile flyers, but we still catch them in the nets if they are around.  And as always the rubber gloves seen in the background are to protect the bats from getting something from us, not the other way around.

Sorry about the near total lack of blog posts this summer!!!  The places I have been working have been pretty deep in the mountains without any internet connectivity.  I am briefly in town so wanted to get out at least something.  Regular postings will start again in the middle of August after I finish my last travel project.

Here is an eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis) in hand from the Monongahela National Forest.  We catch a fair number of these beautiful bats, and so far they don't seem to be affected by White Nose Syndrome as they do not hibernate in caves or apparently in large clusters.  This is a male, which is really more orange than red, while the females are somewhat more reddish although I would have called it the orange bat not the red bat.  The background is the bluish purple examination glove, something we wear when handling animals to help prevent us from spreading any disease to them.  It is not to prevent them from giving us anything, quite the opposite, but makes for an odd background for a bat photo.