Where have all the bats gone?

Here is a couple of websites with more details.

http://www.fws.gov/whitenosesyndrome/

They closed the caves in Buffalo River Area. Sucks, I like Copper Head cave near the Boy Scout camp. I hope the bats beat this...

http://www.nps.gov/buff/parknews/upl...ite%20Nose.pdf
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/whiteno...tyJune2009.pdf

Kev

It is very serious. Caves have been closed in order to stop the spread of white nose syndrome.

Without bats, the mosquitto population will be unbearable! Thankfully I have seen some on both properties and although I never cared for them much, they were a beautiful sight.

Windy, I'll bet the bats were getting a drink of water.

__________________
"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

Purple Martins eat lots of mosquitos...build them a house. I still see plenty of bats...some are out in the daytime in my area.

__________________
It's not good enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required. - Winston Churchill

I'm sorry to see this about the bats. I had no idea. We always see a few bats swooping around the yard in the evening and am happy to have them. This news makes me wonder about a recent encounter I had with a bat. I get up before sunup to get ready for work. I let the dogs out and noticed something dark on the screen. My first thought was that it was sure a big tree frog. Well it was a bat, sick but alive. I brushed it off the screen and it laid on the deck hissing at me. I killed it and deposed of it but thought later that I should have taken it to whomever checks for disease (thinking rabies). I wish even more now that I would have done that. It was too dark to look at the bat closely.

JuliaAnn, 'around here'...where is HERE?

Haven't had a chance to check the links on this syndrome yet. I've been kind of busy - was blessed with a new Grand Daughter on Wed!
I plan to report my experience with the bats to the research and development center at OSU.

Purple Martins. Are they hard to attract? Do they eat nearly as many mosquitoes as the bats? When I was a young girl my father bought a purple martin house from someone who was successful with them. It seems he was instructed about where to locate it and how high but the purple martins never came and it was a battle to keep other kinds of birds out of it.

Thanks, Renee

I think some of the bats are over at G C :smiley-laughing013:


Ok i couldn't resist

Here is a link about the problem.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun...-bats-20100620

A disease killing more than a million with a mortality rate close to 100% continues to sweep across the country. First detected in New York in 2006, it is now found in 14 states in the East and South, leaving starvation and death in its wake, and is working its way westward.

This disease affects not people but hibernating bats. White-nose syndrome, so named because of the white fungus that grows on infected bats' noses, was discovered last month in Oklahoma, the farthest west it has been seen. Since it first appeared in a cave near Albany, N.Y., four years ago, more than a million bats have died, and its reach now extends northward to Ontario, Canada, and southward to Tennessee.