Outdoors: Ernie Cowan

Bats steal show during photo hunt

You could almost see the last fumes of daylight evaporating from the hot desert sands as the sun dipped behind the San Ysidro Mountains.

In the wash of deepening gray, black-tailed jackrabbits were becoming more active, and the black-throated sparrows were no longer coming to the small pond for water.

Another summer day was changing from light to dark, and a different world was about to awaken.

Against a sky that was now the last shade of dark blue, a bat flashed by. Our mission was about to begin.

With friends Russ Hunsaker and bat expert Dick Wilkins, we had set up sophisticated photo equipment that would soon allow us to capture these fascinating creatures as they swooped out of the night to drink or capture insects on the surface of the desert pond.

I was hoping to get a few good images of these interesting creatures that are rarely seen by most people.

The idea of photographing bats struck me while preparing to photograph the Perseid meteor shower a few months ago. As we were setting up tripods and cameras at the edge of a mountain pond, I noticed bats swooping toward the water in the final wisps of dusk.

But how do you go about capturing a tiny mammal in total darkness moving erratically at high speeds?

That’s where Wilkins came in. He’s traveled to remote corners of the world to photograph bats, using infrared sensors that trigger camera and flash when bats pass by.

We met about two hours before dark, and it takes more than an hour to set up and align the sensors, multiple flash units and cameras. As dark approached, we were ready to go.

Shortly after dark the flash units went off. We had our first shot. Over the next few hours I captured more than three dozen images of these rarely seen animals.

Bats have a bad reputation. They are often characterized as disease carriers that will swoop out of the night to bite humans.

In reality, these flying mammals are very clean, grooming constantly, like cats. San Diego bats primarily feed on insects. They are an important contributor to the control of insects, with some species consuming as many as 1,000 mosquitoes an hour. Bats are also important pollinators for many agricultural crops such as dates, figs, peaches, almonds and cashews.

For those reasons, they are also beneficial around your garden.

Most bats live in caves, rock crevices, abandoned buildings, or tree cavities, often in large colonies.

When they emerge at night, their first task is getting a drink of water, which they do on the fly, opening their mouths and dipping into the water.

To attract bats, many people put out bat houses to provide daytime roosting spots. There are online plans available for bat house construction as well as commercially available boxes for sale.

Despite being highly beneficial, bats do not make good pets.

Wilkins, who rehabilitates injured bats, pointed out they don’t interact with people and are in no way warm and cuddly. They should be respected simply as beneficial wildlife and left alone.

Bats can carry rabies like any other mammal. If you do encounter a bat that is dead or appears sick or injured, you should avoid handling it.

During our photography session, we primarily captured images of two species, the Townsend’s big-eared bat and our smallest species known as the canyon bat. There are 22 species in the county and more than 1,200 worldwide.

Wilkins, however, was excited by something else.

“I think I captured two more species. One I can’t ID, but the second is the California leaf-nosed bat. I’ve never seen this bat in the wild or in my hand, so I was pretty excited to see it turn up in my photos,” Wilkins said.