yes, it’s been two posts again, so there’s gotta be something about bats in this entry :razz:

the wwf is currently running a two-week mission to cut reed at schwemm [G]*.
schwemm is the last conserved swamp/moor in northern tirol, and fertilizers are constantly infiltrating from the surrounding agricultural areas. so now the reed is sprawling, and the nutrients are reduced (at least the wwf is trying to do so) by harvesting parts of the reed. here‘s an article in german.
* yeah, the greenish-brown speck in the center doesn’t look very exciting, but it is! there are several endangered species of plants and animals there

like many others, i volunteered for a day, trying to make my contribution…

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i’ve been hosting young bats again, over the weekend.
this time, there was :

• the serotine bat (eptesicus serotinus, breitflügelfledermaus) that lived here previously,
• two baby common pipistrelles (pipistrellus pipistrellus, zwergfledermaus),
• an injured baby of kuhl’s pipistrelle (pipistrellus kuhlii, weißrandfledermaus),
• a northern serotine bat (eptesicus nilssoni, nordfledermaus), and
• an injured brown- or common long-eared bat (plecotus auritus or plecotus austriacus, braunes bzw. graues langohr), which unfortunately didn’t make it through the weekend.

the serotine bat can already fly (and will be released soon) – so i let it lap a couple of times in the room. it was amazing to watch!

[view photos: more bats]

 
BTW: because of the rising number of bat-related posts, i decided to open a “bats” subcategory.

i went to two bat-nights with toni lately: in jerzens [G] and vals [G].
they were not very productive (in terms of catching animals – we only caught two, both in jerzens), but still interesting…

pictures from the one in vals are online now, although… we didn’t catch one bat, but i took some time to photograph the lovely creek in the dark.

[view photos: bat night, vals]

- – - – -
 
some time ago, i was convinced to go see “batman begins”, even though i’m not a batman fan.
what bothered me since i was little, was how extreme/wacky the villains were.

come on, arnold “frosty” schwarzenegger (whose friends are penguins; not that i don’t like penguins) trying to freeze a city, or that joker laughing stock…

 
i must say, i didn’t expect this movie to have so much of a continuous story.
although the first 30 minutes seemed like a long movie-trailer to me (all those very short scenes and short-winded dialogs), the overall rating would be “nice”.

just one thing: a giant microwave emitter doesn’t just vaporize water. it also destroys everything that’s made of water.
now, let’s assume you’d like to bake …a human. guess what’s more than half of the ingredients? exactly – H₂O…

maybe they should have thought of ultrasound, which is also used for those little indoor well thingies (so i assume that it doesn’t roast people). but then batman wouldn’t have been able to “call for backup”. oh, well. :???:

toni’s out of town over the weekend, so he asked me to watch over his two foundlings.
it’s really fascinating work to do – the baby-bat gets a mix of prepared powdered milk, fennel tea and vitamins, which is fed through a tiny pipette.
the serotine bat, which is about 4 weeks old now, already gets maggots.

 
side notes:

• many bat species’ faces strongly resemble a dog’s face. but their head-scratching technique (with the back feet) just seems like it’s copied 1:1!
• as soon as you remove the pipette from the baby-bat, it starts searching around for teats and will try to “bite” anything (the skin between my fingers, for example). it’s really active too, always climbing around in its cuddly home (or on my hands, when i’m trying to feed it).
• today (saturday), the common pipistrelle’s right ear “unfolded”. the left one is still rumpled…

sunday went by pretty fast, and before i knew, they were gone again. and although i didn’t get much sleep (again/still), it was a great experience…

 
[view photos: foster bats]

i tried to take some videos as well:

[view video: feeding a serotine bat*]
[view video: serotine bat scratching]
* by the way: i got the escaping maggot, in case you’re wondering

the .avi-files are encoded in mpeg4/xvid again, since i haven’t been able to find a “universal codec” that’s free and as space-saving…
[video help]

two …roomies have just moved in with me. it’s only temporary – for the weekend, i was told.
oh, by the way, i’m talking about two BABY BATS! :grin::grin:

they’re the cutest things ever: a 4-week-old serotine bat (eptesicus serotinus, breitflügelfledermaus), and a newborn common pipistrelle (pipistrellus pipistrellus, zwergfledermaus) which is only about 2cm in size.
the mortality rate of very young bats is high, but i’m hoping i’ll pull it through.

i need to get up and feed them around 03:30, so i’ll better go to bed now.

 
tomorrow i’ll try to take some pictures…

darn – i forgot to publish this on friday… well, there you go!

i met toni vorauer again yesterday – there was a bat night at schloss ambras (ambras castle) near innsbruck.

the first bats were flying around when it was still pretty bright, and i watched one bat hunting just some centimeters above the water level, and then fly into the web. impressive animals (regarding the hunt, not the getting-caught)!

we caught 8 (!) individuals, from 4 species: 4 common pipistrelles (pipistrellus pipistrellus, zwergfledermaus) – all of which were pregnant, 1 noctule bat (nyctalus noctula, grosser abendsegler), 1 leisler’s bat (nyctalus leisleri, kleiner abendsegler) and 2 greater mouse-eared bats (myotis myotis, grosses mausohr) – austria’s biggest bat!

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this friday and saturday, i attended this year’s GEO-Tag der Artenvielfalt (“biodiversity day”, organized by the magazine GEO).
it took place in kaunerberg/kaunertal valley – a village with about 300 residents, at a height of 1300m.
75 experts from many fields of biology participated, with a common goal: to classify as many species as possible within 24 hours.
(this post only deals with friday, there will be a separate one about saturday!)

my task was helping toni vorauer, adept in bats.

or, as hal put it in “malcolm in the middle” s2e07:

although weather conditions were suboptimal, we caught 7 bats from 3 species: the common pipistrelle (pipistrellus pipistrellus, zwergfledermaus), the whiskered bat (myotis mystacinus, kleine bartfledermaus) and the brown long-eared bat (plecotus auritus, braunes langohr);
they were shown to the curious visitors, weighed and measured, and then we cooked them in a brunée sauce with charlottes and aubergines. just kidding – we didn’t weigh them :wink:

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