July 6, 2000 Evil wetland hit hard

Such a nice (nice for bats, that is) isolated wetland such as the one along the Quarry Creek road ought to produce more bats, we thought. Here Dave, Tom, and Pam combined resources for a night to set an impressive array of net set. A single high and two double highs already were already in place from the previous night. An additional triple high and two additional double highs were installed among the landscaped trees and shrubs below the old dam, an area where bats were observed the previous night, possibly feeding around a streetlamp. This activity attracted a bit more attention than usual, as the surveyors were approached by a somewhat agitated passerby who failed to see any purpose other than harm in what we were doing. Fortunately, this is the exception to the rule as almost always passersby view bat surveying somewhere between "those bats sure are hard to hit...hope you take 'em all" and "wow, if you take my picture by your nets will I be in National Geographic??"

Despite the unusually long local p/r talk, the extra nets brought in a bonanza of six big browns, mostly male. There of which were caught in the triple high, a testament to the "if you erect an incredibly large enough wall of nets, something will blunder into it" theory.