A Long Journey

Time for a big catch up! I’ll begin about three weeks ago with my first Easter away from home and family. Unfortunately Australians don’t really decorate Easter eggs (their take on Easter eggs are candy eggs) so there were no egg dyeing kits in stores. Ahh well, that’s just one more thing to add to my list of things to do with Chris when we are in the States. Chris told me that his family never did Easter baskets full of candy either. What?! That was one of the best parts of Easter as a child: waking up to find that the Easter Bunny had left a big basket full of candy in your room while you were sleeping! I made sure the Easter Bunny stopped by our room this year and left two baskets, filled with things like Reese’s peanut butter cups (a rare find!), marshmallow fluff (another rare find), Cadbury cream eggs, and other delightful treats. Chris and I will be feasting for months (hopefully...)!

On Easter Sunday we drove out to the Penola Cup Race for my second horse-racing experience. I again entered the Fashions on the Field competition, and Chris got roped into it too, this time as an individual contestant among all the girls. Haha. At least there was one other guy in the competition. There were 26 of us (Chris and I were numbers 26 and 25, respectively) and we each walked on stage as our names were called, paused for our pictures, and walked off. After everyone had gone, the judges called the top 10 contestants back up on stage for one final look before making their decisions. They called numbers 2, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 16, 21, and then 25, my number! I couldn’t believe it! We filed onto the stage and waited while the judges deliberated. I was at the end of the platform, and there were three little girls, probably around 5 years old, sitting next to the stage. All of a sudden I felt something touching my leg, and when I looked down I saw one of the girls holding my leg and stroking it. I had fishnet stockings on, which must have looked fascinating to her. I said hi to her and chuckled, and she shyly stopped. The audience was laughing too. It was quite adorable! I didn’t place in the competition, but I’m still amazed that I made it in the top 10! Chris and I stayed a little to watch a few races and then headed home to prepare for our journey to Melbourne on Tuesday.

 

My second race day Fashions on the Field outfit. It got me in the top 10!

 

Chris and me dressed for the races.

 

Notice the bat fascinator. Too bad fascinators aren’t part of everyday garb.

We left for Melbourne on Tuesday morning. I was heading there for the Australasian Bat Society Conference, and Chris was catching a bus up to Albury and then Wagga Wagga, New South Wales for some uni classes. We had to take Chris’s 22-year-old car as mine is still currently out of commission from the kangaroo accident. He had gone to Adelaide when Steve and Claire came out to look at my car, and Chris brought his car back to use until mine is fixed. He had the battery replaced the week before we left since the car had been sitting at his mom’s place for six months and the old battery was dead. I just hoped it would get us where we needed to go and back home again. 

 

At the Giant Koala in Dadswells Bridge, Victoria.

 

Chris turns into a koala.

After dropping him off at the Southern Cross Terminal in downtown Melbourne and navigating my way through the CONFUSING hook turns (see picture below) in the dark in the rain, I finally made it to Lindy’s house, where I was staying for the week. Lindy was on the planning committee for the conference, so I got to tag along and help run the conference, including helping at the registration desk and catering at the opening session and tea breaks. While this did mean very early mornings (it took about 1 ½ hours to get from her house into the city, find a parking spot, and walk to the university), it was well worth it, as I got to meet the registrants as they checked in and chat with them as I went around serving food while catering. Plus, catering was a TON of fun! I got to go “backstage” in the kitchen where the caterers, from catering group Hot Dish, were preparing the food. This of course meant I got to eat stuff as it was freshly made! If you’re in the Melbourne area and looking for caterers for an event, DEFINITELY check these guys out at their website, http://www.hotdish.com.au. The food was AMAZING and Chef Michael pays special attention to detail and presentation. Plus, Michael, Travis, and Mary, the three people working that night, were very nice and I really enjoyed getting to know them over the week. I of course got time to mingle with the bat people too. Mingling at academic conferences is always a bit awkward. One night Lindy and I were talking about it, and she said that when she went to her first Mammal Society meeting as a student, she hated the tea breaks because she didn’t know anyone and felt awkward mingling. During the poster sessions, she would read posters 10 times each to look occupied (I must admit I’ve been guilty of that). She said she didn’t feel confident enough to go up to people and chat and she felt like she didn’t know anything to be able to talk to others about, especially the well-known researchers. What she said really struck me. I look up to Lindy as a mentor and as someone I’d like to be. She’s a world-renowned bat researcher and exudes confidence. How could she have ever been a shy undergraduate who thought she had nothing to contribute? It just reminded me that I am at the beginning of my career and I don’t have to have all the answers now. I am still learning (as I hope I always will be) and I am “allowed” to have moments of uncertainty. There is room for lots of growth and that’s all part of the journey.

 

Only in Melbourne...

 

I came across these “busts” of past somebodies at Melbourne University. They are perhaps the strangest tribute to important people I have ever seen.

 

Creepy.

I gave my talk on my research on Thursday morning. It went well, but I felt I could have done better. I got very nervous and got a dry mouth (like I always do when I’m nervous) so I fumbled some words. But overall it went well and people asked lots of questions afterwards. Many people were also interested in the thermal imaging software I’m using (Thermal Target Tracker, or T3) so I got lots of questions about that. At the conference dinner that night I spoke with Dr. Rodney van der Ree, the organizer of the conference and the Deputy Director of the Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology at Melbourne University. He asked me lots of questions about my project and my future plans. I have decided that I want to pursue the path of ecosystem services of bats for graduate school, including getting farmers interested in using bats as natural pest control agents so we can aim towards more sustainable food production. I mentioned this to Dr. van der Ree, and he suggested I consider studying with his group. Wow, a potential grad school offer! I could definitely see myself working with him and researching aspects of urbanization and agriculture and how bats fit in. It’s definitely something to keep in mind as I apply to grad schools!

Friday was the last official day of the conference. At the awards session I got called up with the rest of the volunteers and given a bottle of wine as a “thank you” for helping out with the conference. I sure wasn’t expecting that! That evening we went to the Yarra Bend Park to watch the Grey-headed Flying Fox fly-out, where I got to demonstrate how all my equipment and software worked. The Melbourne colony, which was originally in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, had to be relocated several years ago due to the destruction the bats caused to the heritage-listed trees in the gardens. The relocation process was a joint effort of many local and state wildlife groups and took six months to complete. The bats were moved to the Yarra River at the Yarra Bend Park, where they have remained since 2003. The colony now contains between 20,000 to 30,000 bats (there were about 18,000 when we were there). I set up the camera so everyone could watch the emergence on the screen. It was quite different from the emergence at Bat Cave, due in large part to the huge size of these bats (they have a one meter wingspan). Terry had the brilliant idea to try recording the emergence directly through the Sony camcorder (using the night settings) without also running it through the thermal imaging camera. I did that and then ran the emergence through T3, and sure enough, the thermal software still worked and picked up the bats! This was a huge breakthrough, as now anyone with a camcorder of the correct format (320x240 pixels) and night settings/infrared can record bat emergences and run the count through the T3 software, which is free from the makers (you just have to email them and they’ll send it to you). You can only do this if you have a clear background that will not cast any shadows from the infrared, like the sky or an open area. But still, this opens up a lot of possibilities for people who want to use thermal imaging technology to count bats but cannot afford a $7000 (or more) thermal imaging camera. How exciting! After the emergence we had a pizza party to celebrate the end of the conference. Well, the end of the “official” part of the conference.

The post-conference fieldtrip began Saturday morning, when we drove up to the Kinglake National Park, about 1 ½ hours outside Melbourne. This area was the worst impacted area in Victoria during the 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires on February 7, 2009. 120 people died and 1,200 homes were destroyed in this area alone. The town of Kinglake was wiped out. Ninety-eight percent of the national park was burnt, 67% of it severely. It took a month to put out all the fires raging across the state. One of the park rangers who had been on duty that day talked with us about the day and showed us a few clips from his camera. The craziest video he showed us was of him and his crew driving through the smoke looking for a way out. It was pitch black out and you could barely see the headlights, despite the fact that it was only early afternoon. I can’t imagine how scary that all must have been. Driving to the park was a huge eye-opener too. Hill after hill was still covered with burnt, black trees. Three years later some areas still have no regrowth. The place where we were staying, the Kinglake Ranges Wilderness Camp, was in an area that has begun to regenerate. It’s quite beautiful actually, although eerily quiet with a lack of many bird calls. We spent the weekend learning about the myriad of acoustic monitoring devices on the market, catching bats in harp traps, and having a good time. I have found that bat people are always a fun group of people and the conferences are never dull. It was a great way to end the week of batty fun!

 

You can still see the burnt trees from the 2009 Black Saturday fire amid the regrowth.

 

This pretty much sums up the field trip: showing bats to curious spectators and taking tons of pictures all with a beer in hand.

 

An Eastern Bent-wing Bat (Miniopterus schreibersii oceanensis), very closely related to the Southern Bent-wing Bat (Miniopterus schreibersii bassanii) that I’m studying.

When I left on Sunday I headed up to Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, about a four hour drive, to meet up with Chris at the Charles Sturt University campus. He had a few more days of his uni class, so I attended a few class sessions with him to pass the time. We learned how to draw and read aerological diagrams, which I found quite fun. It felt good to be back on a college campus. Gosh I really miss school! I spent the rest of the time relaxing in our little caravan in the caravan park. On Wednesday we started to head back to Naracoorte, but we first called the NRMA (the New South Wales version of the South Australian RAA, like AAA in the US) to have someone come out to check Chris’ car. For the last week or so it had been acting up. We’d start the car and drive a few feet and suddenly the power would just turn off. It did this almost every day. The NRMA guy said it could be a problem with the alternator. Great. I crossed my fingers it would get us home. Since there was nothing we could do to fix it there, we decided to start out and try to get to Geelong, about a six hour drive, that day. We made it and got a motel room for the night, then continued our journey home along the scenic Great Ocean Road. We had decided that even though that route was a few hours extra driving compared to the inland route, if the car was going to putz out we’d might as well try to see some neat things while we could. The Great Ocean Road was AMAZING. I was driving (and boy is that some fun driving!) so I couldn’t admire the scenery quite as much, but we stopped several times to get a good look. The day was overcast and cool, but the mist and the low clouds added to the beauty of it all. Of course we stopped at the Twelve Apostles and got some pictures. We made it to Warrnambool that night and then finished our journey the next day. It was amazing to see the change in environment along the way. It went from wet, temperate rainforest with lush green trees and farming pastures to semi-arid dry, open rangeland. What a change! We did have one mishap on the trip. We had meant to get gas in one of the towns we went through but I forgot, so we got down to one bar on the fuel gauge and then the gas light came on. We tried to make it to the nearest town and got within 8 km, but the car began to sputter out and eventually went dead. The steering wheel locked, which was quite disconcerting, but I managed to get the car off the road. Chris pushed it a little farther off. We called Cath, who lived about 30 minutes away, and she agreed to come out with a can of gas. Semis whizzed by the car and made me quite nervous, so we decided to get out of the car and sit up on the hill while waiting for Cath to come rescue us. We paid Cath with a fluffernutter sandwich (and of course cash). We then headed back to Mt. Gambier. Chris and I putzed around in town for a bit and met up with Cath to go over some work stuff for Chris. We headed out around 4:30pm and got home an hour later. By that time I was just so glad to be home. I had a fantastic time at the conference and traveling with Chris, but I was ready to settle back into “real” life.

 

A giant moth in the caravan park. These guys were everywhere!

 

The Mystery Machine (from Scooby Doo) outside our motel! Chris was so excited.

Giant tree in the Otway National Park along the Great Ocean Road.

 

At the Twelve Apostles.

 

The fog and overcast sky made them look beautiful.

 

 

A view of our broken-down car from our picnic spot on the hill.

Things have calmed down a bit. It’s been raining and cold the past few days so we haven’t been able to take emergence counts (grr) but I have been able to catch up on some work. On Saturday evening Chris and I went to Jinhwa’s (one of the guides) place for a barbeque to celebrate her birthday. Coincidentally it was Chris’ birthday that day. He’s 23 now and says he’s “old like me.” Haha.

On Sunday Chris and I attended the Friends of Naracoorte Caves meeting. We just joined the group and I had been asked to be the guest speaker. I gave an update on the bat project, which everyone was really interested in. The Friends have given me tremendous support throughout my time here, including purchasing and lending me the two thermal imaging cameras, the laptop, and both my external hard drives. Some of the members are also interested in helping with the upcoming winter survey of the caves in the region. After the meeting we picked up the fencing material from the district workshop and brought it to Bat Cave. In a few weeks we will be installing the new fence around the cave, which will be farther from the entrance and will hopefully reduce the number of bat hits. It’s been a long time in the planning and I can’t wait to see the final product.

So that’s what’s been happening in my life recently. I hate getting so behind in blogging, but there are just times when I don’t have time to sit and write. Hopefully that won’t happen again for awhile. Oh, one more thing! When Lindy and I were driving back to her place from the conference one night, I saw a wombat run across the road! I’ve been here for eight months and that was my first (live) wombat sighting, in the suburbs around Melbourne of all places. It was not something I was expecting but if definitely made my day.

Bat Information Sheets

For some interesting and educational reading material about bats, see the Australasian Bat Society’s bat information sheets on their website, www.ausbats.org.au. The information sheets include:

“Bats: Fascinating Creatures of the Night”

“Australia’s flying-foxes”

“Flying-foxes in Melbourne”

“City bats need trees!”

“Why bats need dark skies”

“Bats in caves, mines and bridges: do not disturb!”

“Before you prune, consider roosting bats!”

“Bats in your Belfry?”

“Boxes for Bats”

“Bats and deadly diseases”

“Engaging the public in bat research”

“Engaging the public about bats!”

Link to bat information sheets: http://ausbats.org.au/#/bat-information-sheets/4562894228

Cats and Bats: Not a Good Combination

I know it’s been a LONG time since I last wrote. I’ve been away in Melbourne, Victoria and Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, for about two weeks and just got home two days ago. It’s been a whirlwind of activity, including going to the Penola Cup Race and entering the fashion competition, attending the Australasian Bat Society Conference in Melbourne, hanging out in Wagga Wagga while Chris attended a uni class, and driving home via the scenic Great Ocean Road. I have a lot of catching up to do on the blog, but that will have to wait a few days while I get settled back in and make time to write.

For now I just wanted to tell about a bat-related incident. Last week (while Chris and I were away) a couple brought in a dead bat to the visitor’s center and said they found it under the table on their porch. Dannielle, one of the guides, called me about it and I said to put it in our freezer so I could take a look at it when I got home (it joined the six or so other dead bats we already had in our freezer). When we went to the visitor’s center today, the couple was there with another dead bat, this time a Little Forest Bat (Vespadelus vulturnus) (the first one was a Lesser Long-eared Bat (Nyctophilus geoffoyi)). They had found it in the same spot as the first one. I thought it was strange to find two dead bats of different species in the same place near the same time, so I asked if they had an outdoor cat. They said yes. I suspect the cat found the bats roosting either in a tree or in their shed and killed them while playing with them. I told the couple that if they find any more dead bats to bring them in, and if possible to keep their cat indoors. This just goes to show that cats are big predators of both bats and birds and can pose a severe risk to roosting bats. So my take home message is: if you have cats, keep them indoors. It may be “cute” when your cat brings you a little present on your doorstep, but consider what that actually means. They are killing animals that may be protected species (in Australia, ALL bats are protected species) and that may be suffering population declines due to a wide range of threats (loss of food/water, loss of roosting sites due to habitat loss, predation, insecticides, just to name a few). Often cats don’t even eat the animal they catch, they just play with it until it’s dead. So keep your cats indoors. They can hunt the mice in your house and help rid you of pests, all while protecting wild bats and birds.

 

Lesser Long-eared Bat (left) and Little Forest Bat (right) probably killed by a cat. Keep your cats indoors!

An Unlikely Meeting (or Two, or Three)

Now on to the not-so-good things that have been going on lately. Grab a seat because it’s a long list...

It all started one evening about two weeks ago. Chris was making dinner, as usual, and I decided to have a few small pieces of sweet corn to tide me over. When I was doing research in Texas, Liz, Lauren, and I would go out to Jimma’s organic garden and pick sweet corn, chill it in the fridge, and eat it raw as a DELICIOUS snack. So that’s what I did. It was good, although not nearly as good as Jimma’s. I offered Chris a piece and he accepted. He took a bite and within seconds said his mouth and lips were itchy. Hmm. Then he said his throat felt funny and it felt weird to swallow. Uh-oh. He quickly took an antihistamine and called his mom, who’s a nurse, for advice. Of course, being a mom, she suggested he call the hospital and explain the situation. He called the hospital, and of course, being a hospital, they suggested he come in to get checked out. By this time it was 10:30pm. So off we went to the hospital. We sat there for several minutes while he filled out a patient form, and then one of the nurses came over to ask him some questions. She asked him what happened, and the first thing he said was, “My girlfriend tried to kill me.” Thanks! Then the nurse had to write down what had happened and how Chris was feeling, which seems simple enough, right? Apparently not. What should have taken three minutes took 20. She would ask Chris a question (like “How does your throat feel?”) and Chris would respond with something like “It feels like it’s burning.” Instead of just writing “Patient has burning feeling in throat” she sat there for several minutes with the pen hovering above the page deciding what to write. Geez, you don’t have to be all technical, just write what the patient says! By the end I just wanted to rip the clipboard from her hands and write it all myself! After about 20 minutes of this nonsense, she finally finished and called the on-call doctor, who said to give him some meds and send him home. He also said he wanted Chris to see an allergy specialist the next day. We drove home and were thankful that nothing more serious had happened. Who on Earth has a sweet corn allergy? Apparently Chris does.

The tales of woe don’t stop there. They just keep getting better. As I wrote in my previous blog post, last week I went to Byaduk Caves for several days. On my way home I stopped at the Woolworth’s grocery store in Naracoorte to pick up some stuff before heading home to celebrate Chris’s and my 6 month anniversary. As I was backing out of my parking spot to leave, I suddenly heard a loud “crunch” and felt a jolt to the back of the car. I pulled back into the spot and got out of the car, and a lady in another car got out and yelled, “Did you not see me?!” I hadn’t. I had looked both ways and behind me before pulling out, as usual. I have no idea where she came from and still cannot remember seeing her. We drove to the police station, where they told us if the damage is under $3000 they don’t need to get involved. We then drove to a car repair shop to get damage estimates. They estimated about $1500 damage to her car, with paint scratched off the side and a few minor pock-mark-like dents above the tire (although I really don’t see how I could have caused that part of the damage...). I didn’t have him estimate mine because it was only some paint scratched off the back, and there was already some paint missing when I bought the car (and it’s only worth $2000). Luckily I had bought additional third-party insurance (when you get a car here in Australia and register it, you automatically get insurance to pay for injury/death to another person), so my insurance would cover her damage. Of course she didn’t have the extra third-party insurance, so my damage wasn’t covered. Go figure. The lady was really nice though, and for some reason her parents met her at the repair shop (I think they were supposed to be meeting and then we had the accident). Her parents were a bit elderly, and we all chatted for about 15 minutes. Her dad tried to reassure me and said, “This happens to everyone” and “I’ve had a few hit myself over the years.” It did make me feel a bit better. When we parted ways, he invited me out to coffee with them. I politely declined and explained it was my 6 month anniversary with my boyfriend and I’d been gone for several days, so I probably should be getting back. Of course they understood. I’m glad we parted ways on good terms.

I was feeling okay until I got home and looked up my insurance policy to file a claim. Apparently I have to pay an “excess” whenever I make a claim and the accident is my fault. I have a basic excess of $400 and an “under 25 excess” of $500. So I had to fork out $900 just to call and make a claim! If the damage to her car had been under $900 I would have not bothered with insurance and just paid her myself. Unfortunately it was over $900, so I had no choice. Great. That pretty much ruined the relaxed evening of our anniversary.

The next evening we decided to order pizza. Because we are so far out of town they won’t deliver, so Chris took my car to get it. He left at 9:30pm and within 30 seconds texted me saying “Call me.” I didn’t respond because I didn’t want to text while he was driving. About a minute later I heard the car pull in and I knew something was wrong. He was back way too fast. He barged in the door, looking white and shaky, and said “I hit a kangaroo with your car.” My stomach sank, but after a few seconds it lifted and I felt very calm. We went out to look at the damage, and sure enough, he hit a kangaroo. The front of the car was smashed in. The hood was bent up, the metal bar running along the front of the car was bent, the grill was gone, the headlight was broken and the turn signal light was hanging out by its wires, the condenser was bent, and the radiator had a hole in it (we found all this out the next day when we took it to a mechanic, who said getting new parts for it all would cost more than the car is worth). So that ruined our second attempt at celebrating our anniversary. Luckily Chris’s sister’s boyfriend, Steve, is a mechanic, so Chris took about 30 pictures of the damage to send to Steve, and of course none of them were useful. Steve and Claire came out the next weekend to look at the car. Steve said he has access to cheap parts and will fix it for free, so now we just have to find time for that. Chris went back to Adelaide with them and brought his car back the next day (after putting a new battery in it, as it had been sitting unused in Adelaide for about six months). At least we’ve had a car this week to get us around, and we have something to get us to Melbourne next week (I’m going to the Australasian Bat Society Conference and Chris has to attend a few classes for uni). I think everything will work out in the end, which is I guess why I remained so calm about my car the whole time. Either that or I’m just in denial...

 

Chris with the kangaroo that gave us such a wonderful anniversary present. (I was going to get a picture of it on the road where it was after Chris hit it (just in case the insurance company/police needed pictures) but Chris moved it off the road before I got a chance. Yes, it was dead.)

My poor, poor car.

Then on Tuesday of this week I dropped Chris off at the doctor’s office to get his rabies vaccination injection, and I went to my dance class. When I left the dance class to pick Chris up it was dark so I had to use the headlights on his car. When I turned them on the brights were on, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn them off (his car is quite strange). I called him and he told me how he thought to do it, which didn’t work. So after arguing for a few minutes I drove to pick him up with the high beams blaring. When I got there we both looked at the car and couldn’t figure out why they were stuck on, so he called the RAA roadside service (like AAA in the US) and a guy came out to look at it. He looked for a few minutes and then flicked the turn signal handle and they went off. DUH. We felt so stupid, but I guess at least nothing was really wrong.

As icing to the cake on all this, last night I was out setting up for a count at Bat Cave and I walked past the table that had all the equipment on it and caught my foot in the power cord of the external hard drive. I didn’t realize it until too late, and I heard a loud “crack” on the rocks as it fell and hit the ground. I crossed my fingers that it was okay, but when I plugged it into the computer, the computer recognized that a USB device had been plugged in, but the computer wouldn’t pick up the hard drive and I couldn’t open any files or use it. I called the DENR service desk the next day and they said it sounds like the actual hard drive inside is damaged, and the only way to retrieve the data is to send it to a data recovery service that would charge thousands of dollars. Of course. Why should I have expected my luck to get any better? I had about 1 ½ months worth of counts on there (16 counts) and I’d only analyzed about half of them. I talked with Terry about it and he said if the cost of retrieving the data is less than $1000 he (aka the South Australian Museum) could pay for it, as he thinks the data is very important. Now I have to look into getting quotes from recovery services.

I hate ranting publicly about bad things that happen, as usually they blow over pretty quickly, but I figured all this stuff warranted a special blog entry. I just keep thinking, “What else can go wrong?” Maybe this means I’m about to have a streak of good luck and win the lottery or something. One can only hope...

Byaduk Cave Consulting Visit

A few weeks ago I got an email from Mark Venosta, a Senior Consultant Biologist from Biosis Research Pty. Ltd., to chat about the Thermal Target Tracker (T3) software I’m using to count the bats at Bat Cave. I met Mark back in December at the Gluepot bat course, and we talked a lot about our research and the possibility of using T3 for his work. He and his group are monitoring Byaduk Caves near Hamilton, Victoria (a known over-wintering site for Southern Bent-wing Bats) for a wind farm company to help determine if the Southern Bent-wing Bats might be affected by the development of a new wind farm nearby. He wanted to try out T3 at their next bat census at the caves and he asked if I could come out for a few days to help set everything up and run through the program with them. Of course I said yes! Another chance to see some more caves in the area and travel a bit (with my motel room, food, and fuel paid for!). So last week I headed to the caves, which are about 2 ½ hours from Naracoorte.

Once I met up with Mark and Gavin (another Biosis worker) we headed to the caves to assess how to best set up the cameras for the emergence counts. Walking to the caves was quite difficult, as the ground was extremely rocky and grass-covered. I was paranoid the whole time about twisting an ankle or tripping and hurting myself again (I did have a few close calls). Luckily nothing bad happened. We took two nights of emergence counts at one of the caves so Mark could play around with T3 on his thermal camera. These caves are really neat as they are part of a solidified lava flow from the Mount Napier volcano eruption 8,000 years ago (during which a lava fountain several hundred meters high spurted from the crater) and were formed by molten lava continuing to flow beneath. They are much different from Bat Cave. While Bat Cave is just a “small” sinkhole with a horizontal entrance dropping straight down into the cave, the Byaduk caves are massive sinkholes with large vertical cave entrances (think typical cave entrance). They were beautiful! And much, much different from Bat Cave in terms of cave microclimate. Bat Cave is a maternity site for the Southern Bent-wing Bats, which means it needs to be warm and humid in order to provide a suitable climate for rearing pups. The giant mounds of guano decompose and add to the warmth, and the domed roof allows heat to build up. Bat Cave is therefore quite warm and humid, and the guano is relatively dry. The Byaduk caves, on the other hand, are overwintering sites for the bats, which means they need to be cool so the bats can easily enter torpor and conserve energy over the winter. The one cave we entered to estimate bat numbers with an infrared camera was very, very cold (you could see your breath) and very wet. The guano was like mud. We literally sank into it and could hear the “squelching” sounds as we picked up our feet with each step. I was finally able to appreciate the vast differences between a maternity cave and an overwintering cave. I also gained a better appreciation of just how important Bat Cave is to the life history and conservation of these bats. Bat Cave (and the other maternity cave, Starlight Cave in Warrnambool) has such a unique structure that allows heat and humidity to build up to create ideal conditions in which to raise young. Other caves just don’t have the ability to provide those conditions for the bats. That’s why Bat Cave and Starlight Cave are so vital to the conservation of this species. Without them, the bats would have nowhere suitable to raise their young, and the population would collapse.

It felt very weird to be considered one of only a few “experts” on something, especially something to do with computers! It was strange to be asked advice on how to set things up and run the software and to be turned to as an expert. It’s a great feeling, but of course it comes with a bit of responsibility! Mark has asked if I can come back out the next time they do a census there (at the end of April) so hopefully I’ll be able to get back out there again. Who knew I’d be doing consultancy work while on my Fulbright in Australia?

 

Mt. Napier volcano

 

The lava (foreground) flowed from Mt. Napier (background) through Harman Valley 8,000 years ago.

 

The nearby wind farm development (the company wants to expand the site, which is why we were taking the bat census at Byaduk Caves).

 

Publishing Articles and Giving Bat Talks

In other good news, I’ve had a bit of professional success lately. A few weeks ago Dr. Charles Brown, a professor at the University of Tulsa and the advisor I worked under as a summer research assistant in Nebraska in 2008, emailed me with a draft of a manuscript he and one of his students have been working on. The manuscript, which is about net avoidance in cliff swallows, is based off the independent project Ananda Ellis and I did as assistants back in 2008 and that I presented at the American Ornithologists’ Union meeting in 2009. As such, I will be a co-author on the paper. My first academic paper in a scientific journal! Charles has submitted it to the journal PLoS ONE, so keep your fingers crossed that it will be accepted and published soon!

I was also asked by Steve Bourne to write an article about my research on the Southern Bent-wing Bat for the Journal of the Australasian Cave and Karst Management Association. I have just submitted the article so will soon have another published paper (although this one will be less “scientific” and will also include information about my community outreach projects here in Naracoorte). In addition to the ACKMA journal article, another article about my Fulbright project was published in Issue 36 of the Fulbright U.S. Student Grantee Newsletter last week. This newsletter features articles written by current U.S. Fulbright Scholars abroad and is a great way to learn about other scholars’ projects. Here’s a link to my article, titled “Going Batty in Oz: Conservation of the Critically Endangered Southern Bent-wing Bat in South Australia”:

Fulbright U.S. Student Grantee Newsletter, Issue 36, March 2012 

I have also been fortunate enough to have another radio interview with the ABC South East SA, this time for the Saturday morning program with Lucy Richards. It was quite funny because when I spoke with Ms. Richards about doing the interview, I wrote down I had to be ready at 6:45am on Saturday (she would call me on my phone and we’d do the interview live over the phone). However, for some reason I swear she had said to be ready by 5:45am, despite the fact that I’d written 6:45am. So just to be safe, I got up at 5:15 that morning. Of course the interview time was 6:45, so I had to sit around waiting for an hour, which just made me even more nervous. Ah well, I think it went fairly well, especially since it was my first live radio interview. 

In more community outreach happenings, I was asked by DENR to give several bat presentations to the students at the Naracoorte High School. Of course I said yes! I love talking about bats to people, especially students. I presented to four Year 9 classes over two days in early March. It was perfect timing because the students were beginning their unit on ecology, so my presentation fit right in. I focused on bat diversity and how they help the ecosystem, as well as presented information on bats and bat habitat right here in Naracoorte. The kids seemed very interested (they especially liked when I showed them the taxidermy-preserved Southern Bent-wing Bat) and they asked lots of questions. I had a great time presenting and I’m hoping to do some more coming up!

I'm going to be an aunt!

That’s right, my older brother, Andrew, and his wife, Katherine, are expecting a baby in October. Actually, the last time I spoke to them the due date was October 10, my birthday. No, this is no April Fool’s joke. This is one more thing to look forward to when I return home, and one more reason to stay in/near Cincinnati for a bit next year! :)