November 13, 2009
My buddy Alex and I both work with bats. Alex is studying the effect of controlled burns (a.k.a. prescribed fire) on bat activity. When properly implemented, controlled burns are beneficial to both the wildlife and the forest. Actually, fire is necessary for some ecosystems to persist.
Yesterday was the day for the fall controlled burns so I thought I would post a few pictures.
For this burn, the goal was to ignite the fire around the edge in a systematic fashion and let it burn toward the center. Here the guy in the background is spreading the fire around the perimeter using a drip torch.
If you are looking for “media grade” 100 ft flames than you will be disappointed. This is a controlled burn in the east not a national disaster in California.
After the fire goes through there is the long process of “mopping up.”
Water is used where need but generally a little goes a long way.
The fire leaves a nice clean forest ready for the new sprouts in the spring.
Tags: bats, forestry, habitat
Posted at 21:09 EST in Biology, Research.
September 22, 2009
Please welcome Fall, my favorite season.
The last several weeks have been very busy with the end of field season but we have had a great year.
One of the final Indiana Bats we captured was this one. She was already wearing a band and it wasn’t one of ours. Another researcher captured her some time ago and we were lucky enough to capture her again. This happens very rarely in bat research so we were very excited to see her. Right now we are still tracking down who originally captured her -hopefully we will find out soon. Many more interesting things have happened over the summer and I hope to pass some of them along to you in the coming weeks. Until then -happy Fall.
Tags: Indiana bats
Posted at 08:28 EDT in Biology, Research.
August 22, 2009
We had a nice little surprise come zooming into the net last night. He wasn’t too happy about being hung up.
But he got over it. This is the first time I have to handled a live Eastern Screech Owl so it added a little fun to the night.
He was having a bad hair day -probably going through a late summer molt… but was perfect for a new facebook profile picture… Too bad we didn’t catch any interesting bats.
Tags: birds, Eastern Screech Owl, owls
Posted at 15:29 EDT in Research.
August 8, 2009
Is it really August already? Wow -what happened to July? As for me things have been going well -a bit too well actually. I have hardly had the time to blink lately. The field season is moving right along. Our bat captures for the year have exceeded 500 and we have been collecting lots of data tracking their movements (believe me, I’ve been typing it all in).
Lots of interesting things have come up like this Hoary bat. These guys are so great looking -and hard to catch, I always love to see them. Despite the innocent looks they are hard to keep track of. This guy, even though he was a juvenile, zipped along at least 4.2 miles of creek -in one night.
The job leaves little room for anything else but I did slip out to the park the other evening. It was a short little walk and I stopped only to click exactly two frames. This is one of them. Not too bad if I don’t say so myself.
Tags: bats
Posted at 02:30 EDT in Photography, Research.
