The Mount Hope Mine In New Jersey is a monitoring site for bats. It has a history of large-scale bat swarms, and is a site where the endangered Indiana bat finds a place to hibernate.
But the bats have been dying from White Nose Syndrome, so the numbers are down. I am not going into that here, as it is a topic worth much effort but not the point of this post.
So here are a few pictures from our work at the mine, without comment on the larger issue.of how WNS is affecting the bats, as that is something outside of our work.
But the bats have been dying from White Nose Syndrome, so the numbers are down. I am not going into that here, as it is a topic worth much effort but not the point of this post.
So here are a few pictures from our work at the mine, without comment on the larger issue.of how WNS is affecting the bats, as that is something outside of our work.
Aaron handling a bat.
And it is a little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)
Note the sterile gloves. These are used to prevent White Nose Syndrome from being passed along during our work, and we go through a lot of gloves when we are catching a lot of bats.
Jennifer and Jenna working the bats.
And here Jennifer is making notes on a bag with a bat, while Jenna is working out the ID on a bat. Jennifer is an expert, while Jenna is still working on her skills. The bats can be tricky to identify, and this bit gives the new techs a chance to work out the differences between an Indiana bat from the other similar species.
An Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis)
Here is the Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis). Note that it has a forearm band from a previous study and that the teeth are worn down. This is an old bat. Good news that there are old bats still out there with the plague of WNS killing off so many bats.
Indian bat foot
The Indiana bat is pretty similar to the little brown bat, but a couple characteristics set them apart. Among them, the foot and calcar. The foot is quite small, and does not have toe hairs that go beyond the toe nails. But the definitive feature here is the keeled calcar. The calcar is a cartilaginous spur that comes off the ankle. Many bats have this. But a key feature of some is a flap of skin sticking out from the calcar, known as the keel. This photo shows a keeled calcar from an Indiana bat.
And after we caught the bats and identified them and got the particulars, we released them. But we released them with a pile of acoustic monitors handy. Getting a library of bat calls, with known species, is pretty important these days. And to make sure the Indiana bat calls were correct, a light stick was glued to the bats.
An Indiana bat with a light stick glued to it.
Three or more hands making sure the light stick is glued properly.
And, thus light tagged, the bats were released and the echolocation calls recorded and much good data was in the bag.
So a monitoring site was surveyed, and a lot of data recorded. All in one fine weekend of work.
So a monitoring site was surveyed, and a lot of data recorded. All in one fine weekend of work.
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