The Bookcliff Mountains – The nighthawks are sailing end- of-day thermals through the canyon. The coyotes are tuning up their yips from the shadowed hillsides. The pond shining in the gathering half-moon darkness is so busy with bugs that it looks like it is being pelted by raindrops.
And on the bank, five people stand with lamps strapped on their heads. They watch the cattle-trampled oval of murky water as if they are waiting for a performance to begin.
At 9:04 p.m., it does.
“It’s showtime,” announces researcher Alice Chung-MacCoubrey, who had correctly predicted – to the minute – when the first bat would appear out here, an hour’s jouncing ride north of Mack and just miles from the Utah border.
Chung-MacCoubrey, a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, is spending her nights out here tromping through muck, being bombarded with bugs and examining one of the world’s most misunderstood mammals in a study for the state office of the Bureau of Land Management.
The federal agency is spending $15,000 to learn what kind of bats are here and where they roost. Land managers then will be able to predict if proposed future development – a large coal mine and a new wave of oil and gas wells – will have a harmful effect on the nocturnal critters that in this area include five sensitive species and that play an important role in ecosystems: A colony of 1,000 bats can eat 22 pounds of bugs in a single night.
Development can be harder on bats than other animals. Because they congregate closely in colonies of hundreds to millions, disturbing one roost can devastate a large population.
“Besides,” notes Brendan Moynahan, the BLM wildlife biologist who is overseeing this study, “they are a fascinating part of our native wildlife.”
But bats don’t give up their secrets easily. In Chung-MacCoubrey’s words, the world’s only flying mammals – especially those living outdoors rather than in caves – are “tough, tough, tough to study.”
That is quickly obvious on this night.
Before the bats began pouring from their daytime roosts in old coal mines, under cliffs and in trees to fly as far as 10 miles to the only water source to skim bugs, Chung-MacCoubrey and her research assistants sprang to action. They wiggled into waders and plodded into knee-deep mud to string three large nets that look as if they were taken from the heads of lunchroom cooks. They positioned video cameras and a bat-sound translator on tripods. They laid out research logs, capture bags, species guides, rulers and tweezers.
On the first six nights of this study, the bats, with their ability to navigate by bouncing echoes off of objects, all swerved away from the nets. The catch has varied from none to 35 a night.
Minutes after the first sighting on Monday night last week, intern Ben Martin sploshes into the pond to gently grab the first capture of the night, stuff it into a numbered bag and hand it to intern Liz Mering, who peeks inside and cheerfully says, “Hello, nice to see you.”
The creature, no bigger than a size C battery, opens its tiny pink mouth wide and shows off its teeny fangs.
“They can look a little scary,” Chung-MacCoubrey says as she wields a ruler to measure its waving “thumb” and webbed forearm. She turns the quivering creature this way and that just inches from her headlamp, examining its piggish nose, its delicate membrane wings and its private parts. Finally, she declares it a California myotis, a common species in Colorado.
Next, the net yields a feisty silver-haired bat that squirms and makes a sound like a bug-zapper as it chomps at Chung-MacCoubrey’s thumb. She and the other researchers have had their rabies vaccinations.
“Oh, my goodness,” Chung- MacCoubrey says softly as she opens a bag later on.
The tiny, blond, black-masked bat peering out with pinpoint eyes is the size of a date. It’s a western pipistrelle, the first of its kind found here and a species now considered “sensitive” in the region. The designation is not as significant as the “endangered” or “threatened” tags associated with the Endangered Species Act, but it signals that biologists are concerned about the animals’ well-being.
Fourteen bats later, only the killdeer are still darting over the pond as one bullfrog croaks by the nets.
This night will prove to be one of the best. Bats representing a third of the 18 species in Colorado are captured before all the gear is packed up, the guano samples are catalogued and the last bat has fluttered free again into the darkness like, well, a bat out of hell, shortly after midnight.
Next week, Chung-MacCoubrey will be able to tell exactly where they go. She will be gluing fingernail-sized radio receivers to the backs of 10 bats. Before the radios fall off in about two weeks, the researchers will fly over the area and pinpoint bat roosts with Global Positioning System devices.
Then the tough daytime part of this study will begin. Chung- MacCoubrey and her charges will try to four-wheel, hike and climb to those roosts so they can learn more about how particular species are faring.
In August, Chung-MacCoubrey will return with dogs specially trained to sniff out bat roosts. They are being trained using the cracked-pepper-like bits of guano that have been dropped like valuable prizes into glass jars tonight. The study will then shift back to the lab where the now computerized bat echoes, the bat scat and the bat video will be analyzed.
For now, five tired and mud- splattered researchers are acting like bats: heading home from their nocturnal lives only to reappear tomorrow night at another bug-infested pond.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
