In hot pursuit of Bernie

Wednesday night was quite a night. Kerry did some amazing radiotracking on Wednesday afternoon and found the area where Bernie was roosting. It was in a stand of eucalyptus trees. Eucalyptus was introduced from Australia and is grown in this forest in addition to lots of pine. Kerry was able to narrow it down to a couple of trees, but couldn't figure out exactly which one.


This is a picture looking up at the Eucalyptus trees where we suspect Bernie is roosting.

Kerry and I went out to the roost site before sunset with our radio telemetry, bat detector, and night vision in the hope that we could watch Bernie (and other bats) emerge. Matt was stationed on a nearby road in position to follow him when he took off. Well, he took off with little warning and only one call before he disappeared completely from our telemetry at 8:33 pm. Kerry and I had to tear down the hill back to the car through heaps of blackberry brambles. Meanwhile, Matt followed Bernie up the road towards where we first caught him. It turns out he has a relatively repetitive foraging route, so we spent a long time driving up and down the same roads. He even forages within telemetry range of our house! He stopped at two different night roosts in some pine trees for a while. Bats often take breaks during the night while they're out foraging. Amazingly, we were able to track him pretty much continuously from when he left the roost until he returned to it shortly after 1 am. Then we sat and waited for four more hours, until 5:30 am, to see if he'd leave to forage again. We weren't expecting him to return to the roost so early. We'll see if this trend continues.

Last night was definitely our latest bat night so far. But what an accomplishment! We tracked him for 9 hours

Carrie

P.S. Marie Adele- bats are not slimy. In fact, they are actually quite warm and fuzzy. Snakes aren't slimy eiither, by the way, so don't listen if anyone tries to tell you otherwise.