Baldies and bats

Was working at my desk on the PLU campus Monday, and looked up and caught sight of a mature bald eagle flying overhead. Then I went back to work, but kept hearing something that sounded like baldie chatter, so I looked again, and lo' there was said baldie on top of a fir tree, talking away to its mate, I think, who was in another tree. Apparently they come to campus each winter to feed on our dumpster diving squirrels, and the pet hampsters that get dumped on campus grounds.

On to bats, I came across this video on msn, and thought you might like to see it. Bats!! Love those bats. And if you're not into bats, how about vampire moths?


History of Halloween: Bats

Bats anyone? How about spiders?

On Monday the 20th, the Rainier Audubon Society will be having a speaker on birds, and bats. So plan to attend. I figure that most of the bats are sleeping right now, and I haven't seen any in the night sky in about 2 weeks, even with the warm weather going into late September. Oh well, that's gone now.

But was is out in full, besides the Canadian Geese flying this way and that, are the spiders. Our rose garden in Kent has turned into a spider condo, with every spare plane, where one could build a web, taken. In fact one of the uber spiders of the species (I'm still looking it up to find out which one), I think moved into one fo the webs, and ate the builder and plopped herself in the middle one sunny day. Rough neighborhood.

Actually, I think the spiders I'm seeing are not wolf spiders, but orb spiders, some of which can get quite big, and apparently wander indoors during the winter (good maybe they can eat some of the fruit flies that seem to spontaneously combust in my kitchen. Here's a cool spider site, courtesy of WSU.

More bats!

Looking up in the sky tonight in Kent, as the auzure bled into crimson on the skyline, the night fighter pilots came out and did their arials, in search of bugs.

It's good to see the bats back, I was beginning to worry about them. Now I'll have to go out and buy a bat box, and hopefully the cockroaches won't move in instead, as they did the last time I tried to provide a home for the flying mammals.

Okay, where are the bats?

I"ve been taking walks every night now for a week, looking up the sky in the hopes of seeng that familiar flitter, not straight like a bird, but more cirque du solei. Bats. I love seeing them do their acrobatics in the heat blasted summer sky, just barely cooling off as darkness descends. But this year, on Kent's Scenic Hill, they seem to gone?

According to Bat Conservation International, there seems to be a white nose syndrome that is hitting their population in the US very hard.

So how do bats hover in midair?

This BBC article gives an idea of that question.

Are bats disappearing?

At least in New York State?

This is the time of year I start looking outside, hoping to spot something flying spasticly by in the dusk, as the bats wake up to eat. So I read this article with interest.

Other things that fly and squeak in the night

Bats, in particular.

I was at Wild Birds Unlimited in Burien,and came across this brochure on bat habitat. I often see these guys flitting around Scenic Hill in Kent, eating as many mosquitoes at they can find. They are fun to watch in the dusk. I tried putting up a bat house once, several years ago, but the roaches got in their first.

So I plan to try again this spring, after they come out of hibernation or return from migrating south. There is some more information on this at the Organization for Bat Conservation.

Picture of a big brown bat, courtesy of the University of Michigan, Museum of Zoology.