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:

Photobucket

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

Photobucket

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.


Photobucket

Photobucket
at

8 comments:

  1. dawn klingeApril 21, 2009 at 9:51 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
  2. TammyApril 21, 2009 at 10:13 AM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TammyApril 21, 2009 at 10:17 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
  4. Crescent MoonApril 21, 2009 at 12:32 PM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  5. JoyApril 21, 2009 at 12:59 PM

    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. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Val in the Rose GardenApril 21, 2009 at 7:39 PM

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

    Val

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mozi EsmeApril 21, 2009 at 10:04 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
  8. TammySeptember 9, 2009 at 10:38 PM

    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?

    ReplyDelete