Dawn, Menagerie Springs, Big Bend National Park. I first visited Big Bend NP for a couple of days in 1998. I returned 15 years later in May 2013 to catch bats with a team from Angelo State University. Fiona Reid introduced me to Dr Loren Ammerman after I dipped on Ghost-faced Bats in Nicaragua. I tell you, if the quality of Fiona's guiding isn't enough to persuade you to take one of her trips, then her connections around the US and the Amazon ought to be! Although Ghost-faced Bats were my main goal, there were a range of other nice bats I hoped to see in Big Bend, plus endemics like the Davis Mountain Cottontail. Big Bend is about 6 hours from San Antonio airport. I stopped en route at Seminole Canyon State Park where the ranger said he sometimes saw (what I suppose were) Mexican Ground Squirrels crossing the road between the visitors centre and the campsite. I didn't find any during an hour's searching. The first night's batting was at Menagerie Springs, a 3 mile hike to the north west of the Fossil Bone exhibit in the park in a deserted area which was also quite beautiful. It feels like its been a while since I was in the desert and I remembered how much I love it. Sunset, Menagerie Springs The plan was to monitor the 6 nets continously until about midnight and then hourly until dawn. The plan worked: we caught many bats, notching up 9 species, 4 of them new for me.
Brazilian Freetails were the dominant species. But the other captures were more interesting starting with my first Pocketed Free-tailed Bat (Nyctinomops femorosaccus).
Pocketed Freetail Bat
Next up were the first of quite a few Canyon Bats (aka Western Pipistrelles) (Parastrellus hesperus) which I'd not seen in the hand before. Western Pipistrelle And then we hit the jackpot with a wonderful Ghost-faced Bat. Such a peculiar animal. Loren explained that the genus Mormoops means bearer of bugs an apt name given the amount of parasites living on this animal.
Ghost-faced Bat After that we caught a few of my first Californian Myotis (Myotis californicus). Californian Myotis The last new species of the night in our group's nets (we'd split into two groups) was a Pallid Bat (Antrozous pallidus).
Meanwhile the other group, 300 metres away along the wash, caught the most exciting bat of the evening with a groovy Western Yellow Bat (Lasiurus xanthinus), the first Loren had caught in the past 5 years in the park.
Western Yellow Bat They also caught a Yuma Myotis, which escaped before I could get a look, and a spectacular - and feisty - Hoary Bat (Lasiurus cinereus) which we released at dawn.
Hoary Bat What a great night. Sleeping (albeit intermittently) under the bright desert stars was glorious too. I spent most of the day resting, but ventured out in the early evening to look for the near endemic Davis Mountain Cottontail, a species Loren Ammerman had helped describe. The Chisos Mountains are the place to look and Fiona Reid saw a couple on the Emory Peak Trail. Loren also recommended the Laguna Meadows Trail (particularly the meadows themselves) or the Lost Mine Trail in the evening. I walked up and down the latter for more than an hour from 6.30pm but didn't see any cottontails (only the Davis Mountain Cottontail lives at that altitude in any
case so identification should be easy). Driving down the road from Chisos Basin Lodge at about 8pm I did see a couple of Cottontails at around the 4 mile marker post (at about 1600m elevation) and they must have been Davis Mountain Cottontails (the ears in any case were too short for Desert Cottontails it seems). Davis Mountain Cottontail Bat trapping that night was at Glenn Springs a few miles west of Panther Junction. We caught less (both in numbers and diversity) than the night before but it was a pretty spot and we did catch several of my first Western Small-footed Myotis (Myotis ciliolabrum) which are rather hard to distinguish from Californian Myotis.
Western Small-footed Myotis as well as a few more Ghost-faced Bats, Ghost-faced Bat and my first Yuma Myotis in the hand as well as several Big Brown Bats, the last new species of the night.
Big Brown Bat Driving back to the lodge at 2am I saw a Coyote and a species of Pocket Mouse dashed across the road. Walking behind my cabin I grabbed a small Deer Mouse which proved, the next morning, to be a White-ankled Mouse. My seventh lifer of the trip.
White-ankled Mouse (Peromyscus pectoralis) Elsehwere in the park I saw both White-tailed Deer and Mule Deer as well as Black-tailed Jackrabbits. Driving back to San Antonio there were a few Pronghorn on 385 (between Marathon and I10), as well as a large colony of Black-tailed Prarie Dogs about 10 miles north of Marathon. But none of the Spotted and Mexican Ground Squirrels I was hoping for. A big thanks to Loren Ammerman and her students for their hospitality, and to Fiona Reid for the introduction.
Texas: Big Bend NP, May 2013 Jon Hall