In Search of Bats: Part II

It's hard to believe, but it has been a MONTH of bridge surveys. I don't know when a month has ever gone by faster.

After a month, the hardest thing about these surveys aren't the day-to-day mechanics of fieldwork, but figuring out what it means, and what sort of questions I should be investigating. I am more efficient in my surveys; I have a system, and I know what I'm looking for. I have volunteer assistants who both help me complete the surveys and keep me from going entirely crazy on my own.

My previous assistants weren't particularly good with pens.

So, what do bridge surveys really look like on the ground, and without romantic notions?

  

 Bridges come in two varieties: too big to survey, or too small. They are hundreds of feet in the air, or six inches from the surface of a gushing stream. They all look about the same from the little colored square on the GPS, so you never really know what to expect until you drive up (or sometimes, hike up) on it. They are also everywhere. You do not even realize how many bridges you drive over in a day, and probably don't care, but I have learned to care.

 I can tell when I'm driving over a bridge because I get this terrible feeling, a disturbance in the force, telling me I just missed a bridge and I've got to fight my way back to it. I am supposed to survey every bridge I encounter (let me say again, EVERY BRIDGE). Any bridge that I miss could potentially be the one to house a whole colony of bats, and I can't bear to skip even the meanest of bridges.

Start swimmin!

Once under the bridge, I have to check every crevice that could possibly house a bat. Some bridges are easy--a blank slab on the bottom, nothing more--but others have a million tiny hiding places. From the few bats I've encountered so far, I have learned the number one rule of bridge searching, Do Not Make Assumptions. Just because the research says a bat won't be in a 1-inch deep crevice 3 feet off the ground, doesn't mean you won't find one there (apparently).

Don't Make Assumptions means that I need to crawl under the nastiest, cobwebbiest bridges you can find, and stick my face directly into spiders that shouldn't exist outside a horror movie.

I've gotten soaking wet, spit cobwebs out by the dozens, rolled around in poop, fallen off precariously piled rocks, and nearly toppled into torrents of water. My volunteers have similar stories. Anyone who says this is not proper field work should go crawl in an irrigation ditch sometime and then decide. However, the bats I have found melted my heart and made me love them all over again, and I'd survey a thousand bridges for the chance to get up close with them as I have (there are adorable pictures, guys).

My workplace is also beautiful. I am unimaginably lucky to be doing this sort of work in the gorgeous Western Montana, a place that I have been taking for granted. I can camp out by beautiful mountain streams with my volunteer partner, wake up and catch the sun rising over our first bridge. I am content out in the woods, taking an evening run or reading around the fire once the work is all done. The field season is flying by, and while it can be occasionally tempting to wish it was over and all the hard decisions were already made, I try to remember to enjoy it too.

Days like these do not come around often. I have the freedom, and the company of a small but good crew, to make the most of it.

Til next time

-Batwoman