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.
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.
Black hawk hoping for a bat catch at the Campanario Bat Cave evening exodus
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.
A Mustached bat from the genus Pteronotus exiting the Campanario Bat Cave in Costa Rica
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