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. :)

HURRAY!

It does not take much to make me crazy happy. Tonight we went out netting with the contractors. Went back to the river site where we first netted, but this time we put out a total of three nets, one over the larger river, and two over the smaller river. Started out with a decent number of bats coming in, mostly big browns with one red bat. All that was great. Then things slowed a bit with just the occasional bat.

First Myotis septentrionalis caught this summer

And then, just when we were thinking we were going to have another Myotis-free night..... WE CAUGHT ONE! At 12:20am in our net over the large river, we caught a female Northern Long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis). We were all crazy excited. It was awesome. So this bat had the privilege of being the first cave-hibernating species (that wasn't a big brown) to be seen by us on the refuge this summer. It was frankly a huge relief. Just to know that there are at least some still out there. The concern of everyone is that due to the effects of white-nose syndrome, the populations of Myotis species were affected so dramatically that they are no longer present on the refuge. So finding at least one was a very good thing. Hopefully we will get more in the coming nights. :) 

after attaching transmitter

This lucky bat got a transmitter put on it, since it was a healthy female of an appropriate weight. Which means that tomorrow (or... you know... in a few hours....) we will start radio tracking! Super excited to track bats once again. Last time was four years ago.. when I was in Australia! Hopefully, it will be a little bit easier than back then. Since we are solely doing day-time telemetry (to find their roost sites so we can get data on where they are roosting and to conduct roost-emergence counts), it should be a little bit easier. I'm still expecting it to be a little challenging just because it has been a while since a did telemetry, and bats are tricky, even when roosting, because they are so small and you have all the bounce-back from trees. So, we'll see how it goes! Tomorrow should be a fun day. Especially in the 95+ degree heat. Yick. Here's hoping this bat roosts somewhere that we can find relatively quickly and painlessly. Or if not, hopefully I'll at least get a good story out of it. :-D

Hectic one night, dead the next

Wednesday night we resumed our mist-netting. This time we set up in a different area... not over water, but rather in a corridor of the woods, with decent canopy cover, where we had picked up a reasonable level of activity with the acoustic detectors.

Each week someone is the designated 'clean person', and they do not handle any bats. Their sole job is writing down data and cleaning all the instruments between bats (part of the decon protocol). Since I handled a bat already and Jenny and Abby hadn't and Sarah wasn't feeling well, I volunteered to be the clean person. As per usual, we set up camp, and then opened the two nets around 9pm. Immediately we caught a red bat in one net (absolutely gorgeous! I love red bats) and a big brown in the other. Off to a good start we thought. From then on their was a steady flow... and then it got crazy, with four or five bats in the net each time we did a net check. It got overwhelming really quickly. But I did my best to work as quickly as possible, while still accurately recording data and doing everything that needed to be done. On the positive side, time FLEW by. Suddenly it was 1:30am. We actually closed the nets from 12:50 til 1:30 because we were getting backed up with bats and it was going to be too much if we continued to catch things. When we reopened them, we didn't end up catching anything for the last half an hour. So  from 1:30 til 2am we were actually able to sit down a bit which was nice. One of the coolest things of the night (aside from the red bat) was when we had a recapture. We caught a bat that was already banded from a previous year. It will be neat to go back and look at the data and determine when it was first caught and compare measurements on it from back then to now. :) 

By the end of the night our total was 17bats - 1 red and the rest big browns. So awesome that we got such a high number of bats, but less awesome that they were practically all the same species. We are really aiming to catch any of the Myotis species. Turns out where we placed the nets was prime big brown habitat so it isn't surprising that that is what we mostly captured. 


We went out mist-netting again on Thursday night, but in a different area. This time we set up in more narrow corridors near water, in an area where they have captured Myotis species in previous years, and where we have heard activity with the acoustic detectors. Did run into some difficulty during the set-up, in that it was hard to fit a 9m net across the one corridor, while keeping it out of the way of branches. It took a very long time and it ended up having to be quite on an angle to get it to fit, and by the time it was up we just left it open because it was close to 9pm. The other net went up fairly easily and we thought it was in a pretty great location. I figured if we caught anything, it would be in that net. I was mistaken. We only caught one bat the whole night (guess which species? yup. a big brown) and it was in the net that was angled. Ended up closing an hour early since we just weren't catching anything. So as busy as Wednesday night was, Thursday night was suuuuuper slow. I did handle the one bat we did catch, which was good to get more experience. It took me a while to get it out of the net, and Marilyn had to help me... it's one wing was really badly tangled. But eventually we got it out and got it processed. 

working on taking the big brown bat out of the net

The fact that we had so little success on Thursday night was definitely disheartening but we are trying not to let it get us down. Our hope is that it was just an off night, and also that since we are still new to netting and the whole process, that we aren't putting nets in the best of places. But in the back of all of our minds is the nagging fear that we aren't catching any Myotis species because they simply aren't around any more as a result of white-nose syndrome. Still really hoping that isn't the case though. Starting this week we have a group of contractors coming out to trap for 18 days straight pretty much, aiming for Indiana bats and helping us get transmitters on any Myotis they might catch. We will go out with them when we can to get more practice and then hopefully we will start tracking bats during the day if we get transmitters out. So, we're hoping that these contractors, who have been mist-netting a LOT and know what they are doing, will have better luck catching the Myotis bats. If, after their first week out they don't have any luck either, I will be concerned. But for now I am trying to keep my worries at bay. 

So that was mist-netting for this week. It was definitely a busy week, with lots of night work, and by Friday it had finally caught up to me. But we had a nice long weekend to rest up and now we're ready to start week 2. Hopefully we'll have more luck catching Myotis this week. We shall see!

Lessons

Lessons learned thus far during bat internship 2012:

• Do not walk trails with acoustic equipment for the very first time at night. Last night Sarah and I went to walk one of the trails on the refuge with the acoustic monitoring equipment, to get an idea of areas with high bat activity, for both mist netting and possible places to conduct our active acoustic surveys. But we had only ever walked a small portion of the trail, and it had always been during the day. Walking it at night was.... interesting. xD We kept losing the trail and having to back track to figure out where to go. Ran into some tricky overgrown areas with tons of thorns (gotta love multiflora rose. not). We did finally get where we intended to get, and we heard some bat calls during the whole process, but it was most certainly an interesting adventure to say the least. 
• Standing on the side of the road by a swamp at midnight scares the general public. It took us so long to walk the first trail that we ended up exiting a different place than we entered, so that it wouldn't take us another hour to get back to the car. So Sarah and I found ourselves standing at a gate on the edge of the road that bisects the refuge around midnight, waiting for Jenny and Abby to pick us up. While waiting, I'd say about half a dozen cars drove past. Every time, they sort of slowed down and then the minute they saw us, they sped up. It was highly amusing. Like, do we really look that scary? Two girls with backpacks and headlights, standing on the side of a road? At least it provided some entertainment while we waited. :) 
• Just because you've been to a site in the daylight, does not mean you know it well enough to walk it at night. The last place we walked was an area we had been to once before during the day, but there really is no trail. Thought I knew where I was going but quickly got extremely turned around. Luckily, GPS to the rescue. Sort of. We are still not sure we ended up exactly where we were supposed to be, but by that point it was getting late and so we just took some recordings and then headed back to the car, using the trusty GPS. Got back to the car around 1:30, and at least there were some bat calls heard and possible mist-netting sites observed. 
• Mosquitoes are evil. I have a feeling that by the end of this summer I will have developed a strong hatred for mosquitoes. Walking around a swamp, either during the day or at night, with heat and humidity = recipe for getting eaten alive. Not the most pleasant of feelings. And last night was just so gross.... close to 90% humidity, but I wore long sleeves to try to protect myself from both bugs and thorns. By the end of the night we were all quite attractive. Shower was definitely in order.

So, there are some of the things I have learned thus far. Last night was... interesting. The plan is to do the same thing tonight and then hopefully we will do some mist netting two nights this week and with any luck, catch some more bats!

Dreams come true

So, I was beyond excited when I got this internship. It is working primarily with bats, which is exactly what I have been wanting to do, for a very long time. In the back of my mind though, there was always the concern that it wouldn't live up to the high expectations I had built up in my mind. Would it really be everything I had hoped it would be? Is this truly what I want to go to grad school for? Well, after our first week of trapping, I can say with fairly high confidence that yes. This is in fact something I love to pieces.

part of the refuge

On last Tuesday night we did our first night of mist netting, but due to poor weather (it was quite cold, and bugs were fairly non-existent) we did not catch anything. Even so, I still enjoyed the night. There is just something about working at night that I truly enjoy. The world is a completely different place at night. All the sounds are different, everything looks different, it is just a very peaceful experience, at least for me. Probably the coolest thing that night was when we heard what sounded like a group of coyote pups making quite a racket. They had to have been fairly close to us in the end. I had never heard anything like it; it was so cool!

setting up mist nets

Wednesday night we went out once again. This time we were able to put up a second mist net, increasing our chances of catching something. Also, the weather was a lot better and a lot more bugs were present. From the start we were all a lot more optimistic. The second time we checked the nets, we had caught something! And not just one, but THREE bats! In one net. Already I felt a rush of excitement. Because there were so many, we all got practice. The woman who came out with us to help train us and get us comfortable handling bats took at the first one, showing us all the best way to do it. You basically need to figure out which direction that bat flew into the net, then pin the body, and start freeing the bat from the net, beginning with the tail. Once the tail is free, you can move on to one of the wings, starting at the elbow and moving away from the body. When that wing is free you pin it and pull it away so the bat wont get it re-tangled, and then you are able to free the remaining wing. I was able to do it with relative ease. Must say I was pleasantly surprised. It will just take some time to became familiar with how tightly you can handle the bats... I tend to be overly cautious which makes it harder to do. I'm sure over time I will get more comfortable though. :)

Once the bats were freed from the nets, we brought them over to our work table and processed them, one at a time. That was relatively easy to do, especially after the two days of training handling bats in captivity that we had at the start of the job. The whole experience was fantastic... and time flew by. We ended up catching one more that night, for a total of four (all Big Browns... Eptesicus fuscus). I was giddy the entire time. Couldn't stop smiling. :)

me with my first bat!

close-up of my first bat :)

one of the other big browns we caught

 I am now fairly confident in my initial assessment that this summer is going to be fantastic. :) I absolutely LOVE working with bats, both handling and doing the acoustic surveys. My coworkers are awesome, the refuge is beautiful, and hopefully as time goes on we will have success catching more of the Myotis species, like little browns, Indiana bats, northern long-eared, etc. 

Ya'll can expect more posts fairly regularly throughout the summer I think. I am going to be way too excited to keep it all to myself. :)