Salada Kristen

My first taste of mezcal!

Well it’s been a little while since I’ve posted; sorry for that. The past couple weeks have been full of changes due to weather, logistics, etc. A couple weeks ago we were supposed to visit Infierno Cave (translated as “Hell’s Cave”), the only known maternity cave of Greater long-nosed bats (Leptonycteris nivalis) (where the females have and raise their pups) in Mexico, but we ended up not being able to go because of the rain. The cave is located in the Parque Nacional Cumbres de Monterrey in the mountains south of the city, and with the rain the steep dirt roads were too dangerous to drive on. We ended up staying in the office to get the materials together for our community training program in Sabinas, Coahuila the following week, in which we were going to train about 10 members of the Sabinas community and the Protected Area managers on how to do bat monitoring in the area, including using mist nets, acoustic detectors, and GIS (Geographic Information Systems). That ended up getting pushed back a week and then ultimately cancelled, but we (Josefo, Temo, Gehu, and I) still went up to Sabinas last week to mist net for bats in the Don Martín Protected Area along the riparian (river) corridor.

During our first day the storm clouds were rolling in, making everything look beautiful but also threatening. We spent the day driving around looking at an abandoned mine and finding a spot to mist net that night. The highlight of that part of the day was that I got to try my first mezcal, courtesy of Gehu. It was pretty yummy but not how I expected. I expected it to be much smokier. There is a lot of variety in mezcals so I hope I get to try more when I come back here next summer!

Storm over the river.

While we were driving we also saw several animals fly/run across the road, including an owl, a coyote, and a roadrunner, which was pretty cool. We looked at two potential sites for netting and threw one out due to the potential for flash flooding along that stretch of the river. We ended up at a campsite area by the road and river, which when we arrived was already quite wet and muddy from the rain that had passed through. We set up four mist nets from dusk until a bit after midnight, during which time we only caught one bat (a Cave myotis (Myotis velifer), which was common in the Texas pecan orchards where I did my senior honors these work). After taking down the nets we crawled into our tent, and literally a few minutes later the rain drops started coming, slowly at first and then picking up in frequency. It ended up being a very wet night in the tent. Not only did the tent leak from the top so that water was dripping on us, the tent also leaked from the sides and so a nice puddle was formed on the ground. And there were several times when the thunder cracked RIGHT ABOVE us and scared the crap out of me! Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep (I’m a pretty light sleeper normally, and when things like that happen it’s pretty hopeless). I also got eaten alive by something in the tent (I think fleas?) and emerged with quite a few itchy, nasty looking bites. And because it poured that night, and our previous trip to Infierno Cave was cancelled due to rain, the group now says I’m salada, or bad luck. I suppose the Vanderman curse from my mom’s side of the family lends some credibility to that…(And this week it’s supposed to rain several days so it looks like my luck isn’t improving).

Our wet mist netting site for the night.

A mist net set up and ready to catch bats!

Gehu removing a bird caught at dusk.

Cave myotis (Myotis velifer)

Our inundated tent in the morning.

The next day we ate a light breakfast in camp and packed everything up by around 9:00. We then headed back into town for some tacos, and then drove to our next netting site for that night. And guess what? It was a pecan orchard! Gosh, it brought back so many memories of my two (and a half) summers working with Liz Braun de Torrez, a then PhD student, in Texas pecan orchards trying to determine the pest control services the bats provide to the farmers. In case you’d like to hear a little more about that work, here’s a link to a short video that the Texas Farm Bureau made about our work there (and the video shows several of the bat houses I built and installed for my senior honors project!): "Nature's Pest Controllers".

We set up five mist nets, two at the edge of the orchard and three near the river. This night was much more lucrative than the previous one: there was only a smattering of rain before we set up the nets, and we caught 19 bats! All except one were Evening bats (Nycticeius humeralis) which I hold near and dear to my heart since they’re the species I was trying to attract with my bats houses in Texas. The other species we caught was a new one for me: a California myotis (Myotis californicus). Overall it was a successful night, and with much less “bad luck” than the night before!

In the pecan orchard

Gehu weighing the bat in the bag.

Evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis)

Evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis)

Measuring the forearm length

A new species for me!: California myotis
(Myotis californicus)

Checking the finger bone joint to see if it's a
juvenile or adult. This is a juvenile. You can
tell by the unfused joint (the rounded part).
An adult's joints are completely fused/solid.

A molting cicada!

This week we’re planning to go south into the mountains to Infierno Cave (to survey the population of Greater long-nosed bats (L. nivalis) in the cave) or north to a town called Bustamante, where they grow agaves for mezcal (to mist net and set up camera traps around the agave fields to see if L. nivalis are feeding on the agaves). Fingers crossed the weather cooperates, especially since I leave Mexico Saturday morning for the International Association of Landscape Ecology World Congress in Portland, OR!