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!