All good things must come to an end

For those of you who have been paying attention to the upload dates of the last few blogs, you will notice that they have been published today (August 22nd). That is because the last few weeks of the internship were craaaaaaaazy busy and although I had things I knew I wanted to blog about, there simply wasn't time. So now that the internship is over and I am back at home, I'm trying to cover the last few weeks of my time at Great Swamp. 

It is honestly difficult to put into words just how incredible this summer was for me. After years of wanting to work with bats, I finally was given the exact opportunity for which I had been hoping. Not only did I get to work with bats, I got experience doing a wide variety of bat-related field work. Spent plenty of nights mist-netting, getting to see, all told, 5 different species of bats (Big Brown bats [most common], Red bats [next most commonly captured species], Northern long-eared bats [third most frequent], Little Brown bats [4th most frequent], and one Indiana). Got plenty of experience removing bats from the nets and handling them while getting necessary data. The other night work of the season consisted of doing roost emergence counts and the active acoustic monitoring. The most exciting roost emergence counts happened at the barn (one of the largest maternal roosts that we found all summer) and a few of the houses. One of the neat things about doing emergence counts at the barn was that sometimes you could hear the bats chattering, in addition to getting to see them fly out in droves. Getting to do acoustic work was one of the things for which I was most excited. It was just incredibly fascinating getting to hear the calls that bats make, and of course, I just love being outside at night, getting to see bats fly around and hearing all of the unique nighttime wildlife noises. The day work of the summer included telemetry, which is always good for a laugh, and setting out/taking down the passive acoustic detectors (described in previous entry).

In addition to getting to do all of this fabulous work with bats, I was also able to get experience assisting with geese banding, wood duck banding, and tracking wood turtles with the turtle interns (so much easier [typically] than tracking bats). I had been hoping to get experience analyzing the acoustic data but due to the hecticness of the summer, it was never a possibility. That was about the only thing I did not get to do this summer, so all things considered I feel incredibly lucky. 

The next few months Jenny will spend analyzing the data and documenting the results, comparing our data this year to the data collected in previous years (particularly in the years prior to WNS). However, just from preliminarily observing the data, it certainly appears that, as would be predicted, WNS has certainly taken its toll on the bats that typically spend their summers at Great Swamp. Whereas in the years prior to the occurrence of WNS Little browns were the most frequently captured bats on the refuge, this year we only caught 3 all summer. :( Similarly, Indiana bats were captured quite frequently prior to white nose but now, we only caught 1. On the flip-side, big browns were captured in much higher numbers this summer than in previous summers. This could be because they have not been affected by WNS as much as those other species, and so they seem to be moving in to areas that used to be occupied by Little Browns and Indianas. This same data was reflected in the preliminary observation of the acoustic data gathered over this summer. Most of the calls recorded seem to be from big browns, rather than the Myotis species. It will be interesting to see what conclusions are reached after all the data has been fully analyzed. Overall, certainly a very interesting summer with a lot of useful data collected.

Not only was I doing work that I loved, I was blessed enough to be doing it with a group of really great people. We all got along well, both on the job and off, and that is about all you can ask for. We worked well together, but also had a blast while working. Shout outs must go to Jenny, Abby, Sarah and Miles for being just about the greatest field crew anyone could hope for. See below for a nice photo shoot we did on one of our last days. I will certainly miss these folks. Thanks for all the great memories guys; it was a fantastic summer. :)

serious

Silly. B-A-T-S, BATS! :)

 

Hacking through the swamp

Throughout the season, setting up the passive acoustic detectors proved to be the most physically challenging field work. Mostly because the general areas were chosen randomly by some GIS person. Another lesson to add to the lessons learned? Randomized selection leads to some awful places. So many of the areas were nearly impossible to reach, requiring hacking your way through thick swamp vegetation, including many tall thorny plants. Sure, it may have only been a half mile walk, but having to walk that half mile carrying the detector and rebar and pvc pipe and ladder and sledge through that awful vegetation, made things.... interesting. While it often resulted in being covered in scratches and bug bites, sweating, and often drenched (on numerous occasions we got caught in a downpour while setting up or taking down the equipment), it still produced some of the funnest days. I know, I know.... it sounds crazy. But it is the truth. Signs that I am indeed doing what I love... that I still love it, even under less than ideal conditions. :) 

Good example of taking down passive acoustic sites? Our last day of work (August 10th). Three of us went to take down one of the most obnoxious sites (the one that was a 0.5mi hike through the woods and swamp). It was overcast, but we were hoping to get everything accomplished before the rain. Found it without difficulty, but it did start to rain so we were already fairly wet by the time we reached the site. Took it down no problem and then were heading back, trying not to have a misstep and end up knee deep in swamp water. Miles wanted pictures and so Abby walked ahead so that she could look back and get a picture of him walking through the swamp carrying the equipment. I was behind him. As she took the pic he miss-stepped and ended up at least knee deep in swamp water. And there I was, cracking up in the background. So supportive. :-P 

carrying equipment through the swamp, headed back to the car

We continued on our way, and momentarily, it began to really downpour. Somehow I was the one leading (even though I told them I never found my way out of this site successfully) and, of course, we got all turned around. In the pouring rain. Carrying all the equipment. We decide to turn back around and go to a point where we think we went wrong, and at that moment, mud falls off what I was carrying and lands on my shoulder and chest. Lovely. Abby proceeds to take mud and put it on her face, and then on each of our faces. Laughing, we manage to eventually find our way out of the woods, although we still end up on the road and so we have to walk a few 100meters to get to the vehicle. So there we are, walking down the side of the road, carrying all this odd looking equipment, drenched and muddy. We all were loving it. A car literally slowed to a crawl and we saw the passengers turning to gawk at us openly. So hilarious. All we wanted to do was have another person there to take a picture of us, carrying the equipment and walking across the strees, a la The Beatles - Abbey Road. You all know what I'm takin about. It would've been so awesome. Sadly no one was there to take said picture. But the memory of that afternoon will stay with me forever. :) 

Phantom Beeps

One of the side-effects of doing telemetry is that it doesn't take long before you start hearing what we refer to as 'phantom beeps'. When you are driving around for hours searching for a bat, listening to static from the receiver, as you can imagine, sometimes you start to hear what you think are beeps, when in actuality there is nothing. This has kinda been our lives for the past two weeks or so. We put a transmitter on a new big brown bat last Monday (the 16th) and then proceeded to never find her. Every day one of us would drive around, for hours at a time, searching for this bat and never hearing a signal. It got a bit frustrating after a while to be honest. Began thinking that we had lost our ability to do telemetry. And of course, kept hearing phantom beeps everywhere. Luckily, we had other work to do so that we could rotate who did telemetry, giving ourselves little breaks for listening to static to do things like acoustic surveys and mist netting. Then this week on Tuesday night (the 23rd) they put a transmitter on another big brown. Sarah spent ALL day yesterday tracking her, with no luck. Again, super super frustrating for her. I offered to do the telemetry today (along with Miles) so that she could have a break. And the weather was ominous so we weren't expecting much. Drove around for about an hour and then we turned down this one street to head to an area Sarah suggested we check, and suddenly.... A BEEP! AN ACTUAL BEEP! I turned to Miles and we were both like.. you did hear that right?! That was a beep wasn't it?! And we both heard it, and kept hearing it. Of course, pretty much at that instant it began to downpour. Because that is just how our luck is. 

Still, by sitting around in the car waiting for it to slow down and then jumping out and listening between downpours to get a direction, we ended up being able to figure out on which property we believed the bat to be. No one was home so we could not pin point the exact location, and the weather was still sucking so it would not have really mattered anyway. The main exciting thing was to have finally heard a signal and located a bat. 

From then on out telemetry was much kinda to us. We put transmitters on a few other big browns and were able to find them all with relative ease most days (although one did like to vanish every once and a while, and then turn up again back at the same apartment. Pretty sure she just liked messing with us). 

Overall it was a general relief to end the session with more telemetry success. Even if we never did find a roost tree again. All of the big browns roosted in various houses. Making for a nice creepy end to the internship! Most of our time was spent asking for owners' permission to walk on their land and to stare at their house to watch bats emerge. Sitting in some random person's yard for an hour at 8pm and just staring at the side of their house was certainly not creepy. At all. Right? 

(side note - post internship I was walking in my neighborhood at dusk and saw a bat flying around. Had the strongest urge to start creeping around my neighborhood to figure out where the bat was roosting so I could creepily watch said house. You'll be pleased to know I did not follow that urge. As badly as I may have wanted to)

Big Brown Woes

This is the story of one of the many Big Brown bats we have caught thus far. This particular bat gets its own story because we put a transmitter on it. It was one of the five bats we have been tracking these past few weeks. To be honest, we all kinda thought the bat was not the brightest crayon in the box. The second day of telemetry I tracked her to a tiny live tree, in a terribly dense area. It took me a while to decide which tree I thought was the one in which the bat was roosting. Finally, I determined it was this one particular red maple and put down my pack to begin processing the tree. As I started processing, I looked up at the tree and realized, oh hey. There is the bat! Right there. Just sitting on the truck. Out in the open for anyone (including predators) to see. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. For anyone out there who doesn't know, bats do not normally roost on the trunks of trees. They are normally under exfoliating bark, or in cracks or crevasses. So, seeing one sitting out in the open was very odd. A few days later, Abby tracked her to a downed tree. Also a very odd place for a bat to be roosting. Then, that night while doing an emergence count, she once again saw the bat on the outside of the tree and watched her climb up a stump, go over to another tree, climb a bit and finally, eventually, fly off. By this point, we were all just saying how this bat was dumb. She was behaving so oddly and choosing such terrible places to roost. After that she was tracked to the barn and then to a neighborhood where she was just in a live tree in someone's backyard. From there she went a few streets down to another private property. We got permission from the owners and it ended up that the signal was strongest towards the house so we figured she was in the house somewhere (tucked under a crack in the siding or something). We didn't do an emergence count there that night, but the next day she was still there so we went to do an emergence count there that night, just to see if any other bats were using that house as a roost spot. Saw absolutely no bats emerge, and the signal never left. That is when I began to be concerned. I wasn't working the next day but I told Miles that he and Abby should check around the ground if the signal was still there the next day. Turned out it was. And they found the bat, dead, on the ground near the house. :( Needless to say, we all felt badly that we had made fun of her and called her dumb, when it seems like there is a decent chance she was sick. Poor bat. :( We are sending the carcass to someone in the hopes of learning what was wrong with her. In the meantime, sincerest apologies to said bat for doubting her intelligence.

Flying Squirrels and Busy Days

Well, it's been a while once again. My main excuse is that we have been incredibly busy. These past two weeks we have essentially had 5 bats out with transmitters that we have been tracking during the day. Which is a lot. Thankfully a good number of them basically stayed in the barn, but there were two that did not hang out in the barn, and instead liked to change roost trees every single day. Made for some fun times. Luckily, the one Long-eared bat stayed within the same general quarter mile stretch of swamp, which made it a tad bit easier, even though she kept changing trees nearly every single day. And mind you, she was never choosing "good" roost trees. Nope. We seem to be catching the bats that prefer to roost in mostly live trees. Very unusual behavior. Not sure if we are just getting outliers, or if this is an overarching behavior change that is happening... are the bats suddenly roosting more solitarily, rather than in big dead trees with tons of other bats (the usual maternity-type roosts). Guess we'll just have to see where other bats that we catch and transmitter in this second half of the study (from July 15th on) choose to roost. 

So yes, very busy doing telemetry during the day time and roost emergence counts at night. We quickly got behind because according to the original protocol, we were supposed to conduct two emergence counts on every new roost. Since we had 5 bats at once and at least two of them were picking new trees every day, you can imagine how this quickly got out of hand. It was definitely overwhelming. We just did the best we could and got as many volunteers to help us as we could (although there is only so much a volunteer could do... usually one of us needed to be with them, because we couldn't send one out into the swamp on their own). In the end Jenny decided that we had better just try to get one emergence count on each tree. Which definitely helped make things a bit more manageable. We are now nearly caught up.

While all of this was going on, we also needed to find sites to set out the passive acoustic equipment and we started doing the active acoustic work at night as well. Thankfully, we had the contractors mist netting for us, and so that was taken care of. Unfortunately, with all we were doing, we did not get to go out with them very much, but we did try to whenever possible. I think I made it out with them once or twice in July. It was always really nice to get out at night again and get to see and handle the bats (even if we did pretty much only catch big browns). 

Unfortunately, about 5 days ago two of our bats went MIA. They had been at the barn the whole time and suddenly, they just vanished. Drove all over the place and could not pick up a signal anywhere. They are still among the missing. Tomorrow is the last day of the transmitter life for one of them so chances are we will not find them again, which is unfortunate. It also made these past few days a bit frustrating as most of our time was spent driving around searching, without success, for these bats. Ah well.

The contractors have now gone, and so we are back to being the ones to do mist netting. We will only net twice a week (more if we can, but the goal is to have a minimum of two nights a week). This past week I went netting both Wednesday (the 11th) and Thursday (the 12th) night. We went to a site we had yet to go to, that is on the complete other side of the refuge, behind one of the local police stations (it borders the refuge). The first night I arrived late, after doing an emergence count. Got there just in time to help process three big brown bats that they had just caught (perfect timing!). Turned out those we the only bats we caught all night. We did, however, unintentionally catch a few flying squirrels. It was my first experience actually seeing a flying squirrel. They are quite cute, but it is hard to acknowledge that, when they are doing their best to chew a massive hole in our nets and are incredibly dumb about getting out of the nets. We try not to handle them, because they apparently have a strong bite, and so we try to just maneuver the net so they can get out by crawling on a stick. Easier said than done. On Thursday night, I was there from start to finish. It was a fairly slow bat night... just a few big browns and one long-eared (which we couldn't outfit with a transmitter because we are waiting for new transmitters to be sent to us). However, we started joking that we had one bat net and one flying squirrel net because one of the nets caught zero bats, but I think either two or three flying squirrels throughout the night. It gets to the point where we say, 'dammit! there's another stupid flying squirrel in our net'. Ah well. I guess the upside is that I can now say that I have seen plenty of flying squirrels! No pictures to share, cause we were always trying to get them out of the net as quickly as possible so they could do as little damage as possible. Apologies.

Cannot believe we only have four weeks left. Where did the time go?!

Geese Banding Adventure

Yesterday (Thursday), was designated as a day for us to go help NJ Fish and Wildlife with geese banding. So, the plan was to "forget about bats" for the day, and instead, focus on geese. Slight fly in the ointment happened when the contractors caught that little brown bat the night before, and so Jenny ended up staying behind to track it. But the rest of us, and the two turtle interns, all drove up to meet the NJ Fish and Wildlife folks. It was certainly an interesting experience. :-D

Basically, every year, they spend about a week and a half going around to different places all over NJ, corralling geese and banding them, and writing down any recaptures they get. It is done during a time when the geese are molting and so they cannot fly. 

At the first site, corralling the geese took a long time. So we spent much time just waiting for the people in kayaks to round up some geese and herd them over to where we wanted them. When they got close, I had to hide in some bushes, which brought back good memories of crouching down in the brush with Ingrid when we were working with the Sandhill Cranes. :) When told, I came out, picked up this fence type thing and we all walked towards the geese and pretty much boxed them in. It is a little bit challenging to explain. Hopefully some pictures will help (although we didn't get to take many as it was just way too hectic).

geese in enclosure after being corralled, getting ready to band

For the first group, I recorded recapture data. So, the other interns went into the pen, picked up geese, and read their band numbers aloud to me, with me repeating it back to them. Then any birds that were unbanded were given to the NJ Fish and Wildlife folks so they could band them. We then proceeded to go to three other sites, doing the same thing. Let me just say, way more exhausting than you might think at first. Those geese are very strong and can be quite fighters. So when you are trying to hold them by their 'shoulders' with one hand so you can brace their foot with the other and read the band number, it is quite draining on your arm muscles after a while. Definitely fun though. Oh and of course, trying your best not to let the geese completely beat you up... they love to try to bite you. Which you can't really blame them, since we are pretty much man-handling them lol. I somehow managed to only have one significant bite. Some of the others got really beat up. But I also did a lot more data recording than direct handling, so that probably had something to do with it. It would be amusing though cause suddenly you'd have goose pee or poop all over you, and maybe a little blood here or there depending on how much they bit or scratched you. We all looked pretty lovely by the time we were done. :)

It was definitely an exhausting, but extremely fun day. Nice to get some experience handling larger birds. Reminded me of when we banded one of the crane chicks right before it was able to fly. Obviously the cranes are bigger. But yeah, reminiscent for sure :)

Bat tracking

So you'll note, we transmittered a bat and suddenly my entries vanished. Whoops! Sincere apologies. My excuse is that once we got a transmitter on a bat, suddenly life got busy. As we expected it to. But it meant that for a long time I had next to no free time. I was either working, eating, or sleeping. And so, I shall try as best I can to remember what has been going on the past week and a half. 

On the first day tracking the northern long-eared (the 20th), we set out around noon, because we had been out late mist-netting the night before. Naturally, just to make things more fun, Wednesday was the start of the heat wave in NJ. Lovely. The first place we checked was the area where we had caught the bat, as that is the most logical place to start. No signal. Drove around on management roads on the refuge, and after an hour or so of checking areas near the river where she was caught, we stopped by the office to ask what our next plan of action should be. Dorothy, the biologist, suggested we drive along roads south of where the bat was caught, in any places near to the river. Lo and behold, we got a signal. And in less than an hour we found the bat! And guess what? Not roosting in a tree! Instead, she was using someone's barn (which this species, and a few others, will sometimes do). It was very exciting to find our first bat with relative ease. Honestly I had been expecting it to be somewhat challenging, as telemetry can be tricky, and bats are just so small, so that makes things more difficult.

First Indiana of the summer!

That night we still went out mist netting after doing a roost emergence count from the barn. Obviously due to the roost emergence count we got to the mist netting after they had already started. And apparently, we have insanely good timing. As we crossed the river, we heard them say they had caught something. Approach the processing table and low and behold! They caught an Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis). Remember how excited I was for the Northern Long-eared? Multiply that by at least like, 10 and you'll have a vague idea of how I was feeling. Indianas are a federally endangered species to begin with, and they have also been badly affected by WNS, so we were not really sure if they would still be around on the refuge. Prior to WNS showing up in NJ, they would catch sometimes 20 or 30 Indiana bats in one night. But then the last year that mist netting happened on the refuge, which was 2010, I think they caught 6 the entire summer. :-/ So, you can imagine we were quite pleased to get at least one! And I am so so SO glad that we got there in time to see it. Because although we saw some at the bat sanctuary we went to, it is not the same as seeing one in the wild. Put a transmitter on it, and the contractors have been the ones tracking that bat ever since.
 

Telemetry in action

Heading out on the 21st to track our northern long-eared, we were full of high hopes that the bat would be in the same barn. Abby and I got out of the car, turned on the receiver and literally, it was like the sad shoulder slump from Charlie Brown. There was no signal whatsoever. Both of us just kinda crumpled in on ourselves. It was both sad and funny at the same time. So from there, we decided to try a place across the street from the barn that has a bunch of land with trails (it is an environmental ed center I believe). We got a signal from the parking lot, although it was faint and there was a lot of interference from a nearby cell tower. Still, it helped to lift spirits. Wandered around the property for about an hour or so until we finally homed in on the signal, and pin-pointed the roost tree. In the end it was actually right off of one of the trails... we had just taken the long way around through the woods. And even though it was very hot, with canopy cover it wasn't quite as bad, plus the scenery was beautiful, so neither of us were complaining. :) Took about an hour to process the roost tree (label it, take pictures of it, ID the tree, describe the decay-state of the tree, get a canopy cover reading, and measure tree height, etc. That night we went back to the tree to do a roost emergence count (we need two nights of roost emergence data from each roost we find). Then we got frustrated because we never saw a bat emerge from what we had been certain was the roost tree. But we saw about 4 fly around past us and the signal for our bat did disappear, meaning she had flown away. So, we still aren't sure if we just missed her emerging from the tree (which is completely possible, since if you look away for a millisecond you could miss it) or if we had gotten the roost tree wrong. I'd like to think that somehow we just missed her emerging, cause it really really seemed like that was the roost tree. Guess we'll never know for sure.

Since the weather on the 22nd was supposed to be absolutely horrible, we got started before 8am (mind, it was already close to 80 degrees at that point. Gross). Although Abby and I did not mist net at all with them the night before, they did catch another Northern Long-eared, and so we had two bats to track this day, which is another reason why we started early. It was a good thing we did too. Went to the barn first. No signal for either bat. :( Went over to where the first bat had been the day before, and heard a faint signal in a different direction. So we did some more hiking through those trails and ended up on the edge of the river, with a very strong signal pointing on the other side of the river, which is part of the refuge. We did not have our chest waders on and so we decided to go back to the truck, drive onto our management road, and see if we could get to the spot that way, without having to forge the river. Drove around, and could not pick up a signal. While we were over by the capture site, we listened for the new northern, but got no signal. So we returned to the education center, put on our chest waders and hiked out to the spot. And there was no signal. At the exact place where it had been super loud just over an hour earlier. You can imagine our extreme distress. We knew the bat still had to be there (they do not fly during the day, unless something is seriously wrong) so we figured either something happened to the transmitter, or our receiver was messed up. So we hiked back to the car, went to the office, got the other receivers, and headed back out. Still no go. We got a slightly odd signal at times, but nothing concrete. So so frustrating. Back to the office to get new batteries, then back out to the site to see if with new batteries we could get a better signal. Of course, that was the time that we got partway out to the site and thunder and lightning started and then it started to rain. We were going to sit and wait it out til we remembered that the window of the truck was open a bit for the antenna. So we rushed back to the car, and by that point of course, it had pretty much stopped raining. Trudged back out for what we realized was our 5th time that day. Just a wee bit frustrating. But, we were still managing to laugh and have a good time and just joke about it. Finally, with new batteries, we were able to get a decent signal. Found a place where it was feasible to forge the river, and then wandered a bit through some very mucky parts til we finally got to an area where the signal was strongest. It took a really long time to pin-point which tree we thought might be the roost tree. And we weren't very confident. Mostly because it had been such a long day, and we were hot and tired, and the last time, we may have gotten the tree wrong. We knew we just needed to do our best though so we finally picked what we thought was the best option for the tree, processed it, and headed home. Ended up that we were out for 9hours. Which is extra frustrating since the bat was where we thought she was at about 9am. But due to all the equipment issues and weather issues, it just took forever. Also, please note that since it took soooo long, we didn't even get to try to find the new bat. There simply wasn't enough time. Took a brief break to eat and then we headed back out to try to do a roost emergence count. Luckily found a place to observe the tree from the opposite bank, so we didn't need to cross the river, which was a huge plus. And, we did see two bats emerge! The time that one left was around the same time that we lost the signal on our bat, so it seems that we did have the right roost tree! Definitely a good way to end a very long and slightly frustrating day. 

On the 23rd, we got another early start, just cause we had both bats to track and we simply never know how long it is going to take. We started looking for the new bat, since we didn't get a chance to search for that one the day before. No signal around where it was caught, and so then we drove down to the barn, just to check it for both bats. In the off-chance that the new one was there, or the first one had returned there.  Listened for the new bat, and it was there! So, so excited. Then, I changed the frequency over to the first bat. My hands, were literally shaking. When we heard the strong beeps (meaning our bat was there), I started jumping up and down and flailing my arms every which way. Abby kinda stood in shock, and then just sat down on the ground and actually teared up a bit. We were both insanely happy. We were done and had found both bats by 10:30am. So wonderful. Normally, those of you who know me know that I am not a big napper. But that day, when we got back to the house, after lunch I just went out in the back yard, laid out, and definitely fell asleep for a bit. It was awesome. Later in the afternoon I went out with the contractors to see them track the Indiana bat, and maybe get some tips from them. Ended up that bat stayed in the same roost from the previous night, so it was quick and easy which is great but it meant that they weren't able to really give any pointers. But that's ok. :)

That evening we went back to the barn to do an emergence count. Once again saw a bunch of bats emerging from various different parts of the barn (ours emerged from the front at places where the siding was coming off, and a bunch of others came out of a bat box on the back end of the barn). Very cool. 

Sunday, the 24th, we started our morning at the barn. Both bats were still there. Cannot begin to tell you how happy we were. We got back to the house at 8:30am and I definitely went back upstairs, laid down, and fell asleep for nearly 2 hours. Which was grand although did make for some confusion upon waking as to what day it was. lol. In the afternoon we went out to try to pick some spots to set up passive acoustic equipment since we finally got the randomized plots from the GIS person. That was fun because we got to traipse around off road and just wander through the refuge. Found some really pretty places and so sites that looked like they might work. That night we did roost emergence counts at the barn again and saw tons of bats once again. :)

So, that was a week straight of work (7 days in a row). I got Monday off which was lovely. What wasn't lovely was that Sarah and Abby could not find the first bat, at all. Drove all over the place and couldn't hear a signal. The newer one was still at the barn though, thank goodness. 

Tuesday (the 26th) I was back at work. Sarah and I heard the newer bat in the barn, but once again, no signal on the first bat. Super super frustrating. We spent a decent amount of time wandering the trails of the education center, because a few times we thought we maybe heard a signal, but it was never strong and it never lasted at all, which made us wonder if it was just weird interference. The good thing about all the wandering was that we got to see more of their land, and found more places that could be useful to listen for bats when doing telemetry. We also drove around a whole bunch to various places along the river. No signal. Anywhere. It was like she just vanished. Eventually just called it quits. Went back out that night and helped the contractors set up mist nets, and stayed with them for the first part of the night. Sadly they didn't catch anything while we were out, although we only stayed til about 10pm. 

On Wednesday, the same deal happened. Found the one bat in the barn, and the other was still mia. This time we drove ALL over and around the refuge, checking as many places as we could. Still no signal. Anywhere. Since this was the third day of her being 'missing', it was certainly getting frustrating. Luckily, we need a minimum of 5 days of tracking data, and we did have that. Only spent a few hours looking for her, then took a lunch break, and then went back out in the afternoon to scout for more passive acoustic sites. Sarah and I headed out to one that we thought wouldn't be too bad to get to. We were wrong. TONS of multiflora rose, EVERYWHERE. And just really hard to walk through. It took us 45 minutes to walk out hardly that far at all, and we weren't even seeing many good places to set up a site. We took a few points and then just turned around. Back at the office they put the points on a map and learned that we were no where near the box we needed to be in. :-( So, we still need to try to find a better way out to that box to try and get some good points that might be useable. 

That night we did not go mist netting, since we worked a decent amount that day and we were getting up early the next day to help with goose banding (that'll be a different entry :-D). So, naturally, since NONE of us were out with them, they caught something. And not just anything... they caught a Little Brown bat (Myotis lucifugus). Next to Indianas, they are one of the species we most wanted to catch, because while they are not currently endangered, their numbers have been SEVERELY affected by WNS. So, really really glad we caught one, although bummed that none of us got to see it. Hopefully we will catch more over the summer. But either way, it does mean that right now we have 4 of our 5 transmitters out on myotis species bats (because they caught another northern long-eared last night, the 28th), which is wonderful. The goal was to have 5 before July 15th, and 5 after. So as long as they catch one more bat sometime in the next week or so, we'll be golden! :) 

Also, side-note, on Thursday because they caught that little brown, Jenny stayed behind to do telemetry. She ended up finding ALL 3 BATS in the barn. That's right, you heard me correctly. All 3. As in, the bat that had been missing for 3 days, suddenly showed up again! SO HAPPY!

So, as you see, things have certainly been busy on my end. But in the best of ways. I love the job so much. Absolutely love bat work, love the refuge, and love my crew. Everything is great. :) Next time I will write about our goose banding adventure, and then today's adventures. :)