the bats are back in town

The birds have been back for several weeks, but we’re just now seeing our other

flying friends.  This is a little brown bat, about life-sized. 

   It’s a descriptive if not frightfully

   imaginative name.  Some folks

   calls it a little brown  Myotis. 

   That’s not much of an improve-

   ment, so let’s go with the first

   name.  LBB’s are one of the most

   common bats in North America. 

   They’re even in Iceland.

Jude and I see them swooping about most of the year.  I assumed they migrated in

winter.  If I lived in Iceland, I’d migrate, too.  So I had an image of them stretched

out on a beach in Mexico, sipping tiny margaritas.

I was mistaken.  LBB’s hibernate nearby, probably because Mexico is too dangerous

to visit anymore. I now believe that ours go to an abandoned mine close to the farm

with several open shafts.  When two of the vertical shafts were covered four years

ago, a clearance space had to be left in the grating for them.

LBB’s also require a separate roost for a nursery, preferably a warm place with high

humidity.  The mating process is nothing to squeak to your friends about.  It’s more

or less an orgy of awake and torpid bats.  Consent is not required.  About 35% of the

couplings are homosexual.

Females usually bear one baby, sometimes twins.  The kid hangs on mom, breast

feeding for a week or 2 no matter where she goes.  Then mom hangs junior upside

down in the nursery for a week while she forages on insects.  At 3 weeks, the new

generation is flying and feeding itself.  In a month, childhood is over. 

Adult LBB’s have separate roosts for day and night.  Our particular LBB’s have both

in our house.  The day roost is in the peak 0f the roof.  We watch them fly out at

dusk to feed.  After a few hours they go to the night roost under the siding around

the corner from the peak.  There they pack together, rest and poo until they return

to their day roost at dawn. 

There is a sizeable stretch of scat on the HardiPlank under the night roost.  LBB’s

crap away from where they spend most of their time so predators won’t know

where to find them.

One predator, our cat Ollie, found one the day I pulled down some cedar shake

siding to replace it with HardiPlank.  It was under some tar paper and started

chirping in protest.  Ollie found it right away and hustled off with his greatest

catch ever, a flying mouse.

Jude made a dandy bathouse and hung it from our huge maple tree.  We got no

tenants.  We moved it closer to the peak of the roof.  Still no takers.  I suppose we

could wait until winter and block off the entrances to the roosts, but an LBB can

fit through a quarter-inch space.  They’ll roost where they damn well please.

No big deal.  It’s fun to watch them roll out at sunset and gobble up the mosquitoes

that otherwise would be gobbling up Jude.

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Weather Update: our neighbour Chris, featured in the comments below, told me

that he and Nina recently had two nights of sub-freezing weather and frozen water

lines, the latest in April they’ve had in 32 years.  He also sent a wonderful photo that

I cannot get to jump from e-mail to blog.  I’ll figure it out soon, but now I have to go

clean out the dreaded shed.  I’ve exhausted my extensive list of excuses.