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| What was supposed to be a 65 degree day turned out to be a 40 degree and mist and 20 mph North wind day... | This is the smallest group that we've ever had in the past decade to do a SW OK bat count... THREE! | To show you how severe the drough is here, I have never in the past 20 years of doing bat count have seen this pool dry! WOW!!! |
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| Quite worried right off the bat... no bats in the first 100 feet of the entrance... not usual... | but then we started finding small mats... figured the clustering was 224 bats per sq. ft. (16x14) | Saw unique mats for Jester... don't know what is up? Very cold winter this year so that might be it. |
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| And man were they packed in the cracks in the ceiling this year! | But we're glad to report they looked healthy and no sign of any of White Nose Syndrome signs. | You'll see lots of pictures of the same batch of bats from various angles for the scientists who view these pictures for signs of WNS. |
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| This year we did something unique.. we took swabs of thier forearms and snout for signs of WNS .. this group was our first... | We were sent sample vials with specific directions on how to swab the bats (in as much as a non-intrustive method as possible). | We were to dip the giant Q-tip into a vial which contained de-ionized water (pure water)... |
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| and then roll the swab 3 times over the forearm and then 3 times under the forearm and one pass over the snout... | And then put the swab (with any microbes it picked up) into the pure vial and break it off and seal it. | Each vial was numbered and stamped (OK for Oklahoma) and then numbered for logging... |
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| Since Dale does this kind of stuff as a profession with the Air Force... who else should do the paperwork?? <grin> | We then went to another entrance called Train Tunnel (Same cave) (36 entrances!) | And of all of Train Tunnel.. we only had two bats... but they were Long Ears! Worth the extra effort to get them!! |
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| Since I'm never in a picture on our bat counts... here I be! :) What a selfie! | Scarey! If the long ear bat would have woken up it could have died from fright! <grin> | Lots of views of our long ears since we don't get to see them too often! |
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| While they sleep, they curl thier ears up. If we had ears like them, we could barely scratch the top of our ears with our hands! | New camera... learning how to make the stupid flash work (or not). | Cool! |
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| Sorry... repetitious.. but we don't see a lot of these guys! | Dale was waiting for me... I took too long to take pictures for just two dang bats!! | Then on to the start of the cave about 3/4 of a mile away...Homestead entrance... |
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| the only reason we go here ... it's full of breakdown and unstable rock... | is there is always a couple of long ears in this section... never any other type of bats... just long ears... | Don't know why... this year there were these 2 and one in another area here. |
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| Then to Glade Entrance where we get our GIANT mats and large counts!!! | What in the world is going on??? This was the ONLY mat here!!! | Our packing rate was 225 per sq. ft. here. (15x15 here compaired to 16x14 at the resurgence). |
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| We got this mat as 2,025.. (not good as we usually get near 9,000+ from this area!) | Not sure what is going on... it was the ONLY large mat we found (instead of of 4 or 5 of this type of cluster) | Stats from this section: Air Temp: 42.1 Humidity: 66%, Rock Temp: 43.7 Dirt Temp: 39.5 (no water temp: no water in cave)(all temps in F) |
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| I have never found a big ear in this section of Jester.. so this was special!! | It was the only one... this is a myotis velifer (cave myotis)(common cave bat) hibernation area. | Typically the water stabilzes the air above to provide optimal hibernation situation for the bats... but not so this year. |
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| But all of the bats this year looked healthy and had no signs of stress. | But if you look at all of these pictures, there is an above normal level of parasites (ear bugs) that are on the bats. | The rest of the cave had smaller clusters (mats) but none of large size like we are used to seeing. |
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| But also we saw a large number of cave crickets this year.. much more than normal (look about 7 o'clock) | D took numbers in the south section, Dale took numbers in north section, and Carol counted both sections. | The payoff for doing Jester Bat Count... the calazone from Lugi's at Blair... it is the main entree of heaven!! <grin> Thanks Dale and Carol!! Great bat count! |
