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common_nature

Yesterday I stood on the balcony at half past nine, when it was a little less hot outside then inside my apartment. I listened for bird calls, but there were none. Even the swallows and the seagulls seemed to be asleep already. Instead, there were bats!
They weren't easy to see, but as I was looking at the sky, I noticed those little dark shapes fluttering by. They looked almost like leaves in the wind, but clearly had a mind of their own, flying back and forth in front of me.
I wonder what species they were. It's impossible to tell. They could have been pipistrelles, given how small they were, but there's no way to be sure. During the day, they probably live in holes in the old trees beyond the lawn, or perhaps in little cracks in the walls of the building.
I hope they caught a lot of mosquitoes.

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From:

full_metal_ox

How cool! You were witness, from the limitations of your human sensory range, to the epic nightly air battle between bats and nocturnal insects.

I’m guessing air conditioning isn’t widespread in Germany?

From:

signoftea

Most houses don't have air conditioning here, but I heard many people are starting to install it now, since we're getting more heatwaves in the summer.

From:

yourlibrarian

Indeed! Eat those mosquitoes, eatem, eatem!

From:

signoftea

The mosquitoes have been so annoying lately, I'm glad there are predators like the bats who hunt for them and reduce their number.

From:

ranunculus

You can get audio app for your phone which will tell you species info. I went to a lecture on bats at the Hopland Field Station a couple of years ago. They timed it so we walked out to a nearby pond that bats frequent just as they were waking up for the evening. Like you we got to see the bats fluttering by. The scientists had their phones out and were showing us the waveform patterns the bats made. Each species is different. They also had a stationary audio recorder that let them go back and get an idea of how many bats of each species were recorded. That night there were something like 7 species all at the pond! I don't remember the name of the app they were using, but I understand there were, or are several.

From:

signoftea

That sounds like a really cool event! I've been to some bat excursions myself, in the past, and it was always so fascinating.
Thanks for the info about bat apps! Though it seems like they only work in combination with an ultrasound detector, which I don't have.

From:

ranunculus

Now that you mention it I remember them holding up tiny "microphones".
Sigh. I had to go do a search... No I've ordered a mic & program package from Wildlife Acoustics. I'm ALWAYS curious about the world around me, especially out here on the Ranch.

From:

signoftea

That's great! I hope you'll have a lot of success with the equipment.

From:

ranunculus

One of the things we learned at that lecture was that in our coastal redwood groves there are bats that live high in the redwood tree tops, and other, completely different species, that live lower down. Also that most bats don't want to live near our cold Pacific Ocean and are much happier a few miles inland, in the Coast Range hills where it is much warmer.

From:

signoftea

Fascinating! I recently learned a little about bat behavior, too. For example, there are some species who prefer to fly along hedgerows and forest edges, and others who prefer to fly in the open.

From:

ranunculus

That is really interesting! I imagine hedgerows provide lots of insects, but open meadows provide different ones...
Another thing they found in the redwood and fir forests here is that some bats sleep in the cracks and crevices of the bark of the trees, not in a hollowed out limb or tree.
Nature is so fun!