Marina went out to find more bats last night. It was a point count night so we stopped at our 5 set points. We heard bats at three of the five spots! There were even some feeding buzzes over a cotton field. We also saw other nocturnal wildlife including a skunk, raccoon, and deer.
Yay!!!
Tonight Marina and Kaitlin did their driving transect and good news! They heard bats. Around Dunbar Historical Lake and around some crop fields the winged folk flew. Tomorrow will be their third and final one for this week. Hopefully they’ll hear even more
Hey guys!
Last night Marina and Kaitlin went out on an acoustic transect, meaning they took a detector that can pick up bat sounds and went listening for our flying friends. This particular transect they went on has set places where they stopped and set the detector on top of the car for 10 and listened for bats. Unfortunately last night there were no bats to be found. This might be due to the chilly weather last night that average around the mid 60’s.
Tonight they will go out again, this time on a driving acoustic transect. On a planned route, they will drive at about 20 mph with the detector recording continuously the entire time. Hopefully there will be some bats tonight!
Here are some pictures of the detector:
Photo taken by Marina Fisher-Phelps
Photo taken by Marina Fisher-Phelps
Today we discussed building the website. We wanted everyone at the meeting to critique the content that Kaitlin had created thus far so we can create a wonderful website to engage the public about bats in West Texas. In light of today’s comments, we will be adding three static content pages to detail benefits of bats, current threats to bats, and recent bat research publications. We also will add more content about other websites which focus on bats so that viewers receive a more thorough understanding of bat research. For each of the species pages we will be adding echolocation files so you can learn what bats sound like when they search for food. The website is really coming together. (Good job Kaitlin and Marina!) Hopefully, by the end of October we will have a fully functioning page!
This was the second meeting of the semester. We have meetings every 2nd week at 12:30 pm in Room 104 of the Biology building on TTU campus. They are open to anyone interested in West Texas Bats! Join us!
The next meeting on Monday October 15th we will recap the findings of the Kingston Lab bat netting trip, which is this coming weekend!
We had our first meeting for the semester. We will be having them every 2nd week at 12.30 pm in Room 104 of the Biology building on TTU campus. They are open to anyone interested in West Texas Bats! Join us!
In attendance were Tigga Kingston, Sam Braudt, Julie Parlos, Marina Fisher-Phelps, Kaitlin Thogmartin, Maria Sagot, Joe Chun-Chia Huang and Mark McGinley.
We have decided to have a theme or agenda for each week, although it is fine to bring in current news or wander a bit off topic. Today Julie and Marina talked to us about their efforts to answer burning question: ARE THERE ANY BATS IN LUBBOCK??? They spent the summer designing, fine-tuning and implementing driving transects that monitor the presence of bats acoustically _ detecting bat calls– by driving slowly (about 20 mph) along a pre-defined routes with a bat detector (or the microphone) sticking out of the roof of the car. I will leave them to recount the details, but the answer is YES, there are bats here! Hurrah! Not in huge numbers mind, but calls were heard.
Next meeting Monday 1st October. Agenda –reaching out and engaging the public in bat research and conservation!
West Texas Bat Group 