Yet another thing that happened yesterday: on the way back from getting mail, around 9:30pm, which this time of year is already deep dusk, I saw a bat flying in a small clearing over our driveway. Of course our bird book is no help to figure out what that flying thing might have been, so it was google to the rescue. Funny thing, one of the first links to a search on Bats Alaska is to my former officemate's webpage - you got wide interests, Matt!
Unfortunately the main UAA web page that apparently had the distribution maps of the different bat species found here does not exist any more, so all I can say is that it is likely that it was a Little Brown Bat, which is apparently the most common one.
Too bad I can't make a bet with Martin on the name - in California, he was wondering what that bird yonder is, and when I replied that it was the red winged blackbird, he said, yeah, that's the one I am talking about, but what is it called? (I forget what I won after showing him in a bird book that it was indeed the red winged blackbird, a sixpack was it?) It seems like with the little brown bat, we could get into a similar discussion.
1 comment:
Awesome! Bats are totally awesome. It was almost definitely a little brown (Myotis Lucifugus)--the other Alaskan species are southeasterners. The only non-lucifigus found anywhere near Fairbanks was a Big Brown which was dead in a garage after winter near Delta--most likely it was a stow away when the car stopped at Liard Hot Springs on the way up the Alcan in the fall.. Sometimes you'll still
see a "star" near Delta on the Big Brown range plots (check out http://www.batcon.org/SPprofiles/detail.asp?articleID=98).
Bats are super smart--they like hot springs!
The best resource is Bat Conservation International (http://batcon.org/). (But their Alaska bat info isn't quite right... They left out a few species--Keen's Myotis is probably the most recent/interesting/rare.)
I was really happy to see bats flying around our new house the first day we started moving things in. And someday soon I might get some of the new pictures up!
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