Bats

Late Summer evenings push a lot of folks inside for their entertainment.

There's so much to see and hear outside, though, this is a great time to forsake the temptations of the wide screen and sit in the evening air and just listen.

It's buggy here and the price of tiki lamps has dropped to 2 for ten bucks. I don't actually think citronella works as a repellant but the smoke and fumes seem to confuse the various insects that dare to put me below them on the food chain. At any rate, with the lamps burning, there's a bit of light and fewer bugs.

We were hoping to hear the wood thrush but I didn't expect much since it had rained late in the afternoon. I heard a few calls from a distance but nothing close enough to really wrap my ears around. What I did notice were the insects themselves. Not biting but singing.

The annual cicada is the ubiquitous buzzing from the trees but there are lots of other insects that sing to us through out the day. The woods are never quiet and there are any number of songs, yes they are songs, playing accompaniment to our yard work. Even the folks who use pesticides can't kill 'em all. (We aren't purists but pretty close...a bug stands a pretty fair chance around our house) As we listened to the crickets, grasshoppers, and other singers, I watched the sky as the last of the birds flew back and forth over the creek and then saw the bats.

We have bats year round and the most common one is, I believe, the little brown bat, but I'm not to be trusted on my identification. In the winter we find them in the wood pile, but in the summer, they're everywhere. Tonight there were more of them than I can remember, and at times I can see over a dozen at once. Some of them fly within yards of me.

I can tell when they get something large as they bring their feet forward and curl up as they fly for just an instant. The back feet used as hands to stuff the morsel into a bat mouth, and then normal erratic flight resumes.

Eat well, boys and girls (Are there so many because the babies are flying now?...They only have one baby a year and can live longer than ten years, just so you know)

Watching them dart around, there seems to be plenty of food up there yards above the tiki lamps. I like bats.

Peace,

Steve