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Requiem for a Bat: Mysterious Bat Deaths in the Rockies

10,000 Birds

I like bats. So when I spotted a large, handsome Hoary Bat grounded at the side of the path while I walked Muir early one morning, my first thought – after I determined that it was not dead – was “how can I help? A different Hoary Bat, on a better day. It turns out, helping a bat is hard.

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Birding in a Hellmouth

10,000 Birds

There were opportunities to go to far flung places like the islands of the Pacific or the coast of Canada or the Yorkshire Dales… Anyway, as I was obsessed by Africa at the time, I leapt at the opportunity to go to Namibia to collect samples of bat DNA for a biogeography project. I think we caught perhaps three bats.

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Saint Michael’s Summer

10,000 Birds

This species is reasonably easy to find if you are in the right kind of habitat – but I am rarely in that type of habitat. And in order to see the bubbles underwater, one needs to be right above the bird. It was diving right behind me – it could not get any closer than that, and still, I haven’t seen it underwater!

Bats 204
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Grassy Green Space in the Central Valley- Trash Habitat or Prime Real Estate for Oddball Birds?

10,000 Birds

Most days, that seemingly random place is right at home. Keep birding and you might see a White-tailed Kite hovering as it hunts rodents and one of the few Bat Falcons in the Valley might dash into view. Their songs could cease any day now; their brushy field home is being steadily converted to housing.

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Poop From The Front End Of The Bird

10,000 Birds

He was so excited when I described what I had and came right up to meet me. But the jawbone…that was from a bat! Oehlenschlager apologized that he couldn’t say the exact species of bat. It was either a big brown bat or a hoary bat. He can ID just about anything from a small part or bone.

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Birding Sukau, Sabah, Borneo

10,000 Birds

Lucky him, right? The Bat Hawk mainly eats bats, as the name suggests – in a curiously precise statement, Wikipedia claims that 49.3% The Bat Hawk mainly eats bats, as the name suggests – in a curiously precise statement, Wikipedia claims that 49.3% Though he ended up dead anyway.

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Birding Adventure in Mexico Part II: Durango Highway

10,000 Birds

This is where Gila Woodpecker and Yellow-breasted Chat meet Squirrel Cuckoo , Bat Falcon , and Black-throated Magpie-Jay. As the sun began to set, a flock of Mexican Parrotlets alighted in a tree with brilliant red bark, and we all noticed a Bat Falcon watching silently from a high perch above all the action down below.

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