Alabaster Bat Count - 2014 - page 2

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The Date: February 1, 2014 - One COLD day up in NW Oklahoma. Time for the annual Alabaster Caverns Bat Count! Volunteers from the Selman Bat Watch, Park Personnel, and Oklahoma Dept. of Wildlife decend on the park to take the annual hibernating bat census. This year with the discovery of White Nose Syndrome (WNS) in Arkansas and Missouri, we are doing swabs of 15 lucky bats (though they don't think so!) forearms to send off for analysis to see if they may be carring any faction of the WNS virus. 13 people went in and luckly (with that number) 13 came out again! <grin!> Many of these pictures show mulitiple views of the same bat or mat of bats. This is to give the scientists and bat experts different views to examine bats to see if they see other signs of WNS on the bats. Then we just got some for the volunteers to show that they do cool stuff, like scientific endevours, other than just talk about bats ALL of the time! :) Click on any photo to see an enlarged version and click on link to see full 10 megapixel picture in full size.
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No signs on their noses...	Or forearms of WNS.	So here is a typical small mat of myotis velifer (Common cave myotis)
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They seem to like to hibernate in the cracks of the cave ceilings and in groups we call mats.	So these are the ones we are concentrating on to observe for signs of WNS...	... as they are the most common hibernating cave bat here in western Oklahoma.
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And because of that, we take lot and lots of pictures of the same mat from different angles...	... with and without flash and then pass these pictures to bat experts who look over them with a fine tooth comb for any signs of WHNS that may be visible...	So these three are in charge of getting the count in this underground area
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Which came out to 356 bats total in this area....	It was quite cold in this area (42 degrees) so these guys were deep in sleep and we didn't disturb them at all!
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	Every year we take pictures of the bones pulled out of the creek here that goes though the cave... it seems to grow a bone a year????	The search continues...
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We come out from the lower room and meet up with the group from lower cave....	One... and I mean ONE big brown bat on the ceiling...	Eptesicus fuscus is the scientific classification name...
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but he's so high that even a zoom can't bring him close enough for good detail other than his sable hair coat!	Every year James strikes a pose on top of this hill for his facebook profile....	... gotta keep tradition ya' know!!
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		Going down Gun Barrel
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See ya!	Out the end...	Made it!
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Click on any photo to see an enlarged version and click on link to see full 10 megapixel picture in full size.

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Last updated: 2/2/14