The misunderstood bat
Our area is home to more than a dozen species of the most
amazing aerialists nature ever created. Their numbers are dwindling
now, as they migrate to warmer places, but they’ll be back next
spring, arriving on furry wings that are so thin and delicate as to
be almost transparent.
The misunderstood bat
Our area is home to more than a dozen species of the most amazing aerialists nature ever created. Their numbers are dwindling now, as they migrate to warmer places, but they’ll be back next spring, arriving on furry wings that are so thin and delicate as to be almost transparent.
They’re bats.
Bats suffer from an image problem worse than Saddam Hussein’s. I’ll confess that I sometimes find them (the bats, not the dictator) to be a little creepy, especially when they unexpectedly launch themselves from a dark crevice and flit past your face, just as the sun drops below the horizon.
For the record, bats are not a vast reservoir of rabies. Bats do not entangle themselves in women’s hair. Bats are not blind.
But if you can get past all the myths and associations with Halloween, what bats are is a very interesting group of animals – mammals that fly.
There’s a lot to recommend about bats. First, some of the most productive time for observing bird life is in the minutes just after dawn. We’re free to sleep until noon, and we’ll still be up in time for some evening bat watching. Bats share two important traits with birds – flight and migration.
The ability to play with gravity and wind fascinates most of us. Sitting on a ball field on a warm summer night, watching bats stitch crazy zigzag paths across the sky is usually at least as entertaining as the softball game going on below. There’s purpose to their crazy, veering flight – they’re hunting.
That brings us to the reason we should like bats best: their ability to sweep the evening skies clean of mosquitoes and other insects. The darting flight of bats is a hunter’s dance, and we all benefit from their appetites. Think about it: swallows are swallowing insects during the day, when mosquitoes are least active. If you want to rid your garden of evening pests, a bat house is a better investment than the most costly bug zapper. All of our local bat species are insectivorous. Some even sweep scorpions off the ground, dispatching them before they can retaliate.
Their fantastic flying ability still would not be enough to allow bats to dine on insects without a very cool adaptation – sonar. The clicking of bats returns echoes that allow them to home in on the tiniest gnat.
Some of our local bat species carry delightfully whimsical names – Townsend’s Big-eared Bat, Pallid Bat, Big Brown Bat, Small Footed Myotis and Western Mastiff Bat all pass time in our region.
Finally, bats are a great rarity among mammals. They are wild mammals that we can approach, and even interact with.
Way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a Boy Scout, we learned that we could attract bats by quickly brushing the fingernails of one hand back and forth across the fingernails of the other hand. Watching the bats zoom in, searching for what must have sounded like some sort of prey, was a great diversion on campouts.
Bats were also part of another youthful tradition. When the State Theater occupied the vacant lot next to McKinnon Lumber in Hollister, we were regulars at the Saturday matinee double feature, and so were a handful of bats who lived in the upper reaches of the theater. When the lights went low, and the projector brilliantly shown, a few moths would be drawn to the bright screen, only to be swept up by the resident bats.
Their display was especially appreciated at Halloween horror-fests.
Best bet
With weather about to shift to cooler and wetter, our dragonflies and damselflies are about to disappear for a few months. Any spot with some slow-moving water is still likely to be attracting good numbers. A great way to waste a lunch hour, or any idle minutes, is to sit back and watch them. Their interactions are complicated and interesting. But, retaining the focus on aerial artistry this week, their flight is nothing short of stunning. Think about how anything can fly forward at high speed, then stop abruptly and hover, back up, shift right, and zoom off again, all in the space of a second or so.
They do it by moving each of their four wings independently, of course, but it’s an ability that continues to fascinate aeronautical engineers and naturalists alike. Binoculars can be helpful, but their flight is so quick and erratic, that you’re often better to just relax and enjoy the show with your own eyes.
Mark Paxton lives in Hollister and works in Morgan Hill. His e-mail address is [email protected].
