bats

Milky way

Chasing night sounds

There are a lot of interesting sounds that are seldom heard except at night.  Not just bats and owls, but also a variety of insects: crickets, bush crickets, and beetles, to name a few.  The insects like warm nights, and so that’s also when you have more insect predators, like the bats. It’s been really […]

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Dragoons by dedhed1950

Seeking a little quiet

I need quiet the way an alcoholic needs a drink.  By “quiet” I don’t mean absolute silence, the kind that can only be found in an anechoic chamber.  My version of quiet is free from man-made noise, anthropophony, in Bernie Krause’s terms.  No machines, no screaming and yelling, no loud music.  Sometimes I really crave

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Mexican Long-tongued bat

Sugar Bats

Among the long list of interesting creatures that call southern Arizona home are a couple of species of nectar-feeding bats, the Mexican Long-tongued bat and the Lesser Long-nosed bat.  Unlike most bats that feed on insects, nectar-feeding bats feed on the nectar of large flowers of cacti.  They are well-known to most southern Arizonans that

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Gila River Bat

Ultrasonic predators and prey

I’m having a lot of fun with my ultrasonic microphone (Ultramic 200k).  It’s opened up a parallel universe of flying mammals and calling insects and the evolutionary arms race between them. In early August of this year, I found myself camping in a gorgeous spot in the canyon country of Utah – Calf Creek.  I

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Singing mice and the packrat band

I found out recently that mice sing.  Not just little squeaks that we can hear, but little notes that occur at the edge of our hearing – ultrasonic for those of us over 30.  Slowed down they sound like whale songs.  The common deer mice do it, so I set out to find out if

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