I got to catch bats!

Tirimbina makes most of their money from ecotourism, which they use for maintenance and research.  They have 2 main programs: one is a chocolate tour (there is an old cacao plantation and they show you how chocolate was made a long time ago) and the other is a bat tour.

The bat tour is more of an educational presentation about bats and their benefits.  Then at the end they show you some bats that have been caught while you are learning about them.  So I asked if I could help catch the bats yesterday and Emmanuel said yes!

There were two groups and so we needed to catch 6 bats (3 for each group) and at least two different species.  Here is a drawing of the net, its really hard to take a picture because you can't see them, which is the point if you want to catch anything.  (I had used these types of nets to catch owls and song birds in my animal ecology class last semester.)

So we went down to the edge of the river at 5:30 and set up 4 nets.We caught the first one within the first 15 minutes of putting up the first net!

 This is what they look like caught in the net.

 Here is the other type that we caught.  Both eat fruit.  This one was making all kind of noise that we could hear so none of these calls would have been picked up by the recorder that I am using.

 We caught too many of the first type so I got to hold one and then release it!  They are really soft.  (Three rabies shots was worth that experience.) Then after we caught five we only needed one more so went to one of the other traps and there were about 4 bats caught in the net.  There were a bunch of other ones flying around and one flew right over my head and I could feel it.  It was really exciting and kinda scary at the same time.  So we worked to quickly get them out and close off the net because we kept catching more.  It was a great night!

I was feeling a little down about my project and the fact that I only put up recorders and analyze sounds but would never see animals, but going out last night helped a lot.