Monday, April 20, 2009

The Late Show

Our garden is very close to the University bat house. As a matter of fact, our garden is directly under the path that the bats take as they leave the bat house each night (free organic fertilizer falls from the sky).

Front row seats: A hawk sitting on some branches above our garden waiting for the show to begin:

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This was the bat house at sunset last night, as seen from the student gardens:

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And here come the bats:



Tourists line up along the fence next to the sidewalk to watch the bats, but I was one of only three people watching them from the gardens, and I think I had the better spot for the show, because I was much closer to the non-human visitors.
For the hawk and owl, this was all-you-can-eat dinner theater.


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8 comments:

dawn klinge said...

That must be so fun to watch. Great photo of the owl!

Tammy said...

Oh my gosh! lol. That's a lot of bats! Do you have an idea how many bats live there?

That faint noise...is that the bats? I've heard they make kind of a high pitch squeal, and I can kind of hear something like that in the background.

Tammy said...

Does this go on all night? Or mainly sunset and sunrise?

Crescent Moon said...

The bats all leave the bat house just after sunset. The numbers peter out after about 15 or 20 minutes. They don't stay together after that. They fly over to the lake for water and go off hunting alone. They do make a high pitched noise and that's part of what you're hearing, although part of the noise is from the crowd of people near the fence.

Joy said...

That is SO cool! We've thought about putting in a bat house a few times because we see them over our field occasionally. That owl photo is amazing. :)

Val in the Rose Garden said...

That is AMAZING! I thought I got good nature shots this week... you take the cake woman! What a neat bat house!

Val

Mozi Esme said...

Lucky owl! And interesting video - that would be quite fun to watch.

Tammy said...

I just finished watching the bat video with Kayla and she sure loved watching it. We went outside tonight to watch for bats and only saw 3. :(

Is there an estimate to the number of bats at the bat house near you?

Crafty Crow