Bat Heaven

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I didn't think I'd be posting again so soon on bats, but this is a really neat cave I was in yesterday and the day before. It's in Monroe County, Alabama on a 4,000 acre private tract for which I'm doing the conservation easement baseline documentation. The owner casually mentioned there was a cave there, and upon investigation I was pleasantly surprised by its character and contents. I can find no documentation of it (although NSS has another one recorded from elsewhere on the same property), and I suspect it's "new to science," as they say. Local lore says it was once a hiding place for both Indians and Confederate soldiers, and that it contains a lost cache of gold coins guarded by rattlesnakes "as big around as your neck," but no evidence of any of these was seen. The bats visible on the ceiling appear to be Myotis austroriparius, and this is likely a maternity cave for the species. Eric Spadgenske and I conservatively estimated 2,000 animals, but that could be off significantly. I went back in yesterday to get this photo, catching the light as it was reflecting off the small stream to the ceiling. Although bats and caves are often associated with the dark underworld, a friend I shared this with said it looked like "bat heaven," and I have to agree!

As for the lost gold, next time I'm bringing one of these gadgets...


And one final note: I love palindromes. I actually own this book. My daughter is named AVA (and was born in 2002). Well, last time I failed to talk about entering a cave with Eric (mentioned above) and Eva Kristofik (also of USFWS), but you see them briefly in the video. How on earth I failed to remember my all-time favorite at that particular moment I'll never know. But here it is:

EVA, CAN I STAB BATS IN A CAVE?

It would have been so cool if I'd said it at the time, pocketknife in hand, poised menacingly over a bat. See, I would actually be asking a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent named Eva about the legality of stabbing bats right there on the cave wall. Not that I'd ever have done it, of course. But I missed that opportunity and I fear it will never again come up again in regular conversation without seeming somehow contrived. Oh well.

Bat Sampling

Two nights ago I had the privilege of observing/assisting with part of a statewide bat inventory project at a cave less than 20 miles from my home. Keith Hudson, bat expert and one of ADCNR's Nongame Wildlife Program biologists, was directing (that's Keith's voice in this video), and other ADCNR and USFWS biologists were there as well. I'm not mentioning the cave by name because it's on private property, but it's one of the largest and most significant bat caves in Alabama's Coastal Plain. Keith was hoping to get four or five species, but we found just two. Southeastern myotis (Myotis austroriparius) is the most abundant, and was all we caught in the harp trap. We caught a few hundred, but there had to be many thousands of them in all, although we did not attempt even a ballpark estimate. Eastern pipistrelles (Pipistrellus subflavus) were also present in fair numbers, seen clinging to the cave wall well after most of the other bats had emerged.

The Austbat harp trap Keith uses is an amazing thing. Set up at the cave entrance (or exit, from the bats' perspective), it intercepts emerging bats after dusk, gently plopping them down into a collecting bag. Clear plastic flaps hang down on the inside of the bag, keeping them from crawling out. Incidentally, all bats were released following species ID and determination of sex and reproductive status.

This cave is in an area known as the Lime Hills, a physiographic province just south of and adjacent to the Red Hills. I've been there several times over the years, and it's really a special place. Not only is it perhaps the most important maternity cave in the state for southeastern myotis bats, it is the southernmost known occurrence for pickerel frogs (Rana palustris) in Alabama, and botanists recognize it as one of the southernmost localities for red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis).

RCW Translocation Time Again

Here's what I'll be doing again later this month. This ADCNR video is from the 2007 translocation of 7 endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers from Ft. Benning GA to Enon Plantation near Hurtsboro AL. That was the first time this was ever done on private lands in Alabama, and it's been a huge success. This year we're moving 12. A couple of weeks ago a team of 17 people installed 57 artificial cavity inserts in just a day and a half to get ready for the move.



Without the generosity, support, and conservation ethic of the landowner, Cam Lanier III, obviously this could never happen. Some of the funding is Mr. Lanier's contribution, with the rest in the form of a federal grant through the Alabama Forest Resources Center. Eric Spadgenske (USFWS) is featured, and he's really the brains behind the operation. Also featured is Mark Sasser of ADCNR. I'm in the video, too, but kind of as an "extra" in a couple of scenes. (That's me grabbing the end of the net at the beginning, and installing an insert later on.)

This could be really, really bad.

This August 2 story on introduced Amazonian apple snails from the Mobile Register is chilling. Let's hope it's not too late to stop them this year.

"When wildlife officials realized that baseball-sized Amazonian snails had colonized the main pond in Mobile's Langan Park last year, their worst case scenario involved the giant gastropods escaping into Three Mile Creek.

Now, a year later, that's exactly what's happened."

I have a bad feeling about this.


WKRG.com News

E. O. Wilson Biophilia Center

On Saturday Sept. 12 I attended the grand opening of the E. O. Wilson Biophilia Center on Nokuse Plantation near Freeport, FL. A wonderful and much-needed educational facility for the area's youth. The exhibits, classrooms, and long nature trail are first-class. MC Davis and crew have done a fantastic job of putting this place together. It was a treat to meet and hear E.O. Wilson again, as well as a number of good friends. At one point some of us were standing around talking and we realized that we had a mini-convention of south Alabama-north Florida nature bloggers. Here's a photo by Matt Aresco of yours truly (left) alongside Margaret Gunzburger (Life in the Piney Woods) and Dave Steen (Living Alongside Wildlife). Much more cool stuff on the Wilson Center is on Margaret's blog.

The Ecopassage Again

Matt Aresco in the Lake Jackson culvert.

Fair coverage in today's New York Times.

Our National Woodpecker

I'm vacationing with my wife and daughter in Washington DC. Yesterday morning, as we exited the new Capitol Visitor Center and walked south toward Independence Avenue, I heard the familiar cackle of a pileated woodpecker. Tourist camera in hand, I managed to get this (cropped) photo as it flew from a massive post oak.


I then turned about 180 degrees to take this photo, just to put the scene in context.

Now, I don't know how many acres of pileated woodpecker habitat exist on the National Mall, but I've walked most of it, and it's really not that much. It's hard to imagine more than a pair or two living there. I was quite surprised to see the bird, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. The area is basically a park, and there are a lot of old deciduous trees, but it's a very urban "forest," interspersed with museums, monuments, and open spaces. Still, had I been tasked last week with driving 900 miles to obtain evidence of a pileated woodpecker in my first hour of exploring the National Mall, I'd have probably said it couldn't be done.

I suppose there's a list of the birds of the Mall, but I haven't found one. The pileated is listed as "common" in nearby Rock Creek Park, a protected area. I'm fairly certain the presence of such a conspicuous bird at the Mall is already known. But reflecting back on my unsuccessful searches for the larger ivory-billed woodpecker down in Florida's Choctawhatchee, where people I know swear they've seen ivorybills, I wonder how long it would take for a team of experts to confirm my DC pileated sighting. Probably not very long, I'll grant you. If the tables were turned and it was the pileated whose existence was in doubt, would a photo of the same quality and resolution as mine be acceptable as evidence? No. Sadly, no photos or video even as good as this exists for the ivorybill. I remain hopeful, but I'm not nearly as optimistic as I once was.