Birdwatching
with Phyllis Yochem
Archives
| Arts & Entertainment
| Audio/Video
| Business
| Classifieds
| Columns
| Food
| Forums
| Health & Fitness
| News
| Obits
| Opinions
| People
| Politics
| Science/Technology
| Search
| Sports
| Subscribe
| Travel
| Weather
Published
by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. CLICK FOR NEWSPAPER DELIVERY
Tuesday, October 30, 2001
Custom gives bats a bad rep
Halloween is tomorrow. This is a not-quite-bird column for Halloween about a not-quite-bird.
This not-quite-bird sleeps, hanging upside down, in a cave by day, and at night flies about - perhaps in graveyards. Tomorrow it will be seen in stores and doorways, swooping between cobwebs.
It does not lay eggs, but bears a single baby every year, carries it in a sack for a few days, then hangs it on a wall with hundreds of others. You have no doubt guessed by now that this not-quite-bird is a bat.
People are half afraid of bats, since the creatures carry the untrue reputation of being neck-biters and blood-suckers. There is a myth that bats will fly down and entangle themselves in a woman's hair. Yet bats do much good, eating bugs that truly bite.
Bats have existed in almost the same form for 50 million years, with their well developed auditory senses allowing them to orient themselves by emitting high frequency sounds and receiving the echoes as they bounce off objects. They also hunt their prey with this super hearing.
Bats also possess the ability to rapidly change their body temperature and metabolism. Some bats in northern climates lay on heavy coverings of fat, select a secluded spot, and hibernate during the winter. Others migrate to warmer regions.
Colonies of this flying mammal breed in caves in the Hill Country. Seventeen miles southwest of Mason, the Eckert James River Bat Cave provides the right temperature and humidity to serve as a maternity roost for pregnant Mexican free-tailed bats between March and October every year. This cave, open to the public, belongs now to the Nature Conservancy of Texas. For additional information contact the Preserve Manager at (915) 347-5970.
On a birding trip we were once permitted to visit a bat cave on private property near Concan. We gathered at sunset and waited on the hillside at the mouth of the cave until the bats came swarming out, off to their night adventures. We thought we could detect a special, dank smell as they flew by.
Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds in
Texas since 1960.
| Discuss
about birdwatching | | Home |
2000 Caller-Times Publishing
Company, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All
rights reserved.
|
 |
 |
|
