Bunyips and Bats and Birds, Oh My!

What better way to spend the weekend than catching bats and camping in the Outback! Last Thursday my boyfriend, Chris, and I headed up north to Birds Australia Gluepot Reserve, near Waikerie, South Australia for a bat workshop. Terry Reardon, one of my project collaborators and one of the workshop presenters, invited Chris and me up for a fun weekend of batting. How could we say no?

The workshop started Friday afternoon with lectures about bat taxonomy (current research suggests that bats may be most closely related to horses, tapirs, and rhinos!), the bats of Australia, and diseases associated with Australian bats. We also spent some time looking at preserved specimens of male bats to identify them by their penis shape. Yes, some species of bats (in this case three Vespadelus species: Inland forest bat (V. baverstocki), Large forest bat (V. darlingtoni), and Southern forest bat (V. regulus)) are only identifiable by the shape of their penises. I seriously wonder about whoever figured that out. After some poking around under the microscope, we prepared for an evening of mist netting and harp trapping. I was excited about the harp trapping because I had never used one before. All my previous bat-catching experience has been with mist nets. Harp traps are basically two or three (or sometimes more) rows of taut fishing wire strung vertically between poles. The wire rows sit over a cloth bag that collects the bats when they hit the wires and slide down into the bag. Once the bats slide into the bag, they just crawl up the side (there’s a plastic cover that prevents them from flying out) and hang out there until someone collects them. The cool thing about harp traps it that, unlike mist nets, you can leave them unattended overnight and collect the bats in the morning, although of course it is better to check several times throughout the night. Harp traps are a lot less stressful on bats than mist nets. If it’s a cool night the bats just go into torpor and are quite calm when you collect them. Sure beats removing nasty, biting bats from mist nets! You do have to be careful during the summer when the females have pups, as we wouldn’t want the pups to get hungry without their moms! Over two trapping nights we caught some cool bats: Little pied bat (Chalinolobus picatus), Gould’s wattled bat (Chalinolobus gouldii), Lesser long-eared bat (Nyctophilus geoffroyi), Gould’s long-eared bat (Nyctophilus gouldi), several species of Vespadelus (forest bats), and a freetail bat (Mormopterus sp.). While we did have to get up at 4:30am to check the traps and release any pregnant/lactating females or juveniles, it was well worth it. It was great to see some other Australian bats besides Southern bent-wings. And I got to practice my bat identification skills with my new Australian Bats book!

A harp trap set up in a possible bat flyway (under flowering branches that will attract insects and hopefully therefore bats). The bats can’t see the fishing wire on the harp trap well and fly into them, then slide down the wires into the collecting bag at the bottom.

A bat under the plastic protector in the collecting bag.

 

Holding a Lesser long-eared bat (Nyctophilus geoffroyi)

On one of our trapping nights, Terry taught us a “bat dance” he learned while trapping bats in Papua New Guinea. Supposedly it brings good fortune to your trapping so you get lots of cool bats! To prepare, you have to get three branches with leaves, and put one branch sticking out of the back of your pants, like a tail. You hold the other two branches in your hands. You then crouch down low, and begin dancing and stomping around while chanting loudly:

“Jesus is Number 1!

Jesus is Number 1!

Jesus is Number 1!

HEY!” (with a large leap into the air)

I wasn’t quite expecting those words (I was thinking a native chant or something like that), but it was absolutely hilarious to watch Terry do it, and then to do it all together as a group. I’ll have to add that to my bat surveying methods!

The next night (Saturday) we released the bats we had caught in the harp traps. We wanted to get some good reference calls from the forest bats. To do this, we taped small light tubes (about ¾ inch long) to their belly fur. We then released them and I watched as seven little green glowing blobs zig-zagged through the trees in the dark of night, followed closely by a line of glowing Anabat (acoustic detector) screens chasing after them. Quite a funny thing to see!

 A forest bat (Vespadelus sp.) with a light tube taped loosely to its belly fur.

Waiting for my guy to take off. I had to hold him under my shirt to warm him up for a bit before he would go.

In addition to trapping, we also played around with some cool acoustic detectors. Several of the participants had brought their own detectors. These included an Anabat detector connected to a PDA so you could see bat calls in real-time and analyze them in the field, as well as record GPS locations of each call. I must admit I got a serious case of Anabat envy. Maybe that’s what I’ll save my Christmas money for over the next several years...

Serious acoustic detector envy...

An emu footprint, plus a normal foot (me) and giant foot (Chris) for reference.

 A Grey Butcherbird (Cracticus torquatus) visiting our campsite looking for food. These guys prey on small animals like lizards, birds, and insects.

Chris and me at our campsite in the mallee woodland of northern South Australia.

The weekend of batting came to an end all too soon. However, the adventures had only just begun. Chris and I packed up our gear on Sunday and headed off for home. It was about a 5 ½ hour drive, so we decided to take it slow and split it into two days so we could see some touristy things along the way. We stopped for lunch in Waikerie (the Citrus Centre of Australia!), and I was amazed at all the Christmas decorations on the street and in shop windows. Even though the first week of December is over, I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that it’s almost Christmas. It’s so warm out and without the cold and snow I can’t seem to comprehend that it’s almost here. I think it would be much harder for me to be away from home and my family at this time of year if it was more like home outside, with snow and Christmas music on the radio. It will be interesting to see how my first Australian Christmas goes!

With Santa Claus, wearing a tank top. Something’s wrong with this picture.

The main attraction on our return home was the Bunyip, a mythical creature that the Aborigines believed to live in bodies of water and come out at night to devour any human or animal prey in the vicinity. We stopped along the waterfront in Murray Bridge and followed the Bunyip’s giant footprints into its lair, where we inserted a $1 coin into the slot machine and then stood quaking in our boots as the creature rose from the murky water and let out its fearsome roar!

The Bunyip emerges!

So terrifying!

We also stopped at a tiny place in Ki-Ki (a tiny town) called the Recycled Wireworks Gallery. The large wire sculptures on top of the roof had caught our eye on the way to Gluepot. We rang the doorbell and a lady welcomed us into the veranda of the home. Her husband, who makes the sculptures, came out to continue giving us the tour of the pieces located throughout their backyard. He collects old and trash wire and metal from farmers, old fences, etc. and turns them into artistic creations. He had sculptures like a kangaroo, giant dragons, a bumblebee, a coffee table, and the signs of the Zodiac. Pretty neat!

Our tour guide with one of his creations.

Now I’m back home and already missing camping in the mallee woodland, living out of my car, and eating Chris’s delicious bush tucker (no, I don't mean grubs and wallabies and nuts and berries, although that technically is what bush tucker refers to. I just wanted to use that term because it sounds cool). You can bet there will be plenty more camping adventures to come!