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| As it was raining outside we all waited for the others to arrive in the park office. | Then down into the depths of the Earth... will we ever see the light of day again??? | Right in the entrance way we found a bunch laying around in their winter sleep. |
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| Mel was out paper book recorder... we would call out the counts from various places around the room and she would write the count down. | We found a lot of bat mats this year... | One of the lads with us had a recorder built into his helmet so the entire event was documented on digital film. |
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| All of the bats observed looked healthy and showed no signs of WNS symptoms or any other pathogen. | Many angles of each bat or mat of bats were taken for the scientists who will look at these pictures for any evidence of something we may have missed in our observations. | |
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| Each picture is shown in it's thumbnail mode on the main page... | You can click on any picture to see it in 50% of its size... or on that page is a link for FULL SIZE picture. (Most detail at Full Size). | |
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| The majority of the bats were common cave bats (Myotis Velifer) and are the ones you see in almost any picture. | Most myotis like to cluster together in what we call mats. | |
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| When a bat goes to sleep for the winter, they only have so much fat on their bodies for the long nap... | If they awaken too many times during the winter they can use up those fat reserves and perish before the winter ends... | Mostly because their main food is insects which are not found in great numbers (nor at all on real cold winters).for them to feed and restore the fat. |
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| Almost every bat or mat was off trail so that they wouldn't be disturbed by the common visitor in the caverns. | This is what it looks like when a person wearing a light on a helmet looks at you while they are talking! <grin> | |
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| We found a lot in the lower room with almost all over water in this section. Burrr... it was cold water too!! | ||
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| For a large part of the count we are just on the visitor tour trail venturing off a bit to count a group under a ledge. | But right on the trail was something pretty unique!! | A big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) is not rare but uncommon but rare to see in such an open place!! |
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| They have a nice sable brown coat and are larger than the cave myotis. | Then we came across some large mats of myotis. | |
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| Clean face!!! | ||
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| Arms and membranes look normal. | ||
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| Near the end of the trail we did a swabbing of 25 myotis for scientific research. They weren't harmed... only took a large swab with clean water and wiped it across their nose and arms. This would pick up any bad stuff and will be examined by scientists | 6,542 was the OFFICIAL count this year! | Then out of the cave to feast at Stables Cantina!! |
WNS Swab Procedure - Streaming Version - 4.6 meg WNS Swab Procedure - FULL HD - 630 meg |
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