July 13 Field Update

July 13, 2000
Bat houses and more bugs

Today we visited private property in hopes of picking through some colonies of house bats. Our first stop was a garage in Charleston where bats which were happily residing in the roof and walls have been kicked into the outside flashing by the owner's in-progress eviction. Here a decent amount of splattered droppings indicate a somewhat substantial dawn return. About a half dozen could be seen relaxing between the flashing and the concrete wall on the exterior of the building. The dropping size seem to suggest little browns. Our new appointment was pressing, so we left before I got any ideas to scale the building in an attempt to pry any bats from the roofline.

Above: The garage exterior. On this type of structure bats will typically use crevices along the entire roofline.

Above left: Closeup of the bat crevices and entry point.

Above right: These dropping are from one night of action.

Left: This shop is apparently the garage of choice for Bo and Luke Duke.

The next residence near Kanawha City oddly reported bats in the fairly cool basement areaof the house. A quick check found some droppings indeed, but no obvious bat-friendly entrance from the outside. My theroy was the previous owners did an exclusion two years ago, and these were bats desperate to continue to use the structure in some way. We could not find any repair work on the exterior to support this, though. The owner reports no bats problems for a week now, so it appears they may have left as mysteriously as they arrived.

A third house was visited next door and appeared to have bats entering where the soffit met the brick wall along most of the length of a gable end of the house. Staining on the white trim board at the peak as well as dark staining on the brick below the soffit suggest a somewhat significant colony. The opposite gable end of the structure also had good crevices near the peak, chances are bats will resort to these if they are not sealed as well.

Mist netting was more eventful than usual as we were visited not only by Jason from the USFWS but also Debbie and Cristy of the Corps of Engineers. Debbie and Cristy left just before the action became hot and heavy, starting when Jason pliered out a nasty beetle bug and culminating with the capture of a big brown and pipestrelle. Even dave snagged a red bat over at his site west of Buffalo. We continue the march towards Point Pleasant...

Way above: Part of the mist net site near Frasier's Bottom. This is an extra double high set at a powerline flyway. It was not as successful as the two sets in the stream nearby.

Way above right: Is this not the nastiest looking evil flying insect along the Kanawah? We think so.

Way above: Jason on evil attack bug removal. He looks exceptionally demented while disassembling the critter...I think he's getting into it a bit much.

Above: One of our big browns...quite happy that Jason did not employ the Gerber-multi-plier mist-net removal technique.

Just above: Our frisky female pipestrelle.