2024 Bat Survey/Culvert Blitz

I am going to try to journal more here as I've been chased away from FB by those wanting to beat me over the head with their "superior knowledge". Have you ever had your joy of learning about nature stolen by someone who absolutely has superior knowledge on a subject, but likes to beat you with it instead of stoking your fire to learn more? You know, the passive aggressive corrections, the act of turning the subject away from the simplest explanation and usable vocubulary to highly specific vernacular and niche subjects to exclude the person with the least knowledge, or how about trying to undermine someone while they are trying to teach community science? That's where I am at with the Mississippi Naturalists group on FB. I have a lot of ideas to try educate those five thousand Mississippians on their natural surroundings, but I have those that like to derail and argue to the nth degree and I am just over it. So I shall try to journal more here.
The surveys went well yesterday with fewer overall vertebrate diversity due to cooler temps, and we were still unable to access the final two culverts- one likely is dammed on private property by beavers, the other needs MDOT to remove vegetation, but we were able to access one that was inaccessible the previous two years and it had over 30 bats in it, which is a lot for our culverts! We are using new disinfecting protocols as WNS makes it's presence known further south, for those concerned about our proposed endangered PESU-Tricolored bats. Despite the sometimes daunting physical effort of getting into these culverts we were able to document three different species of bats, several mammals including beaver, a very large paper wasp nest, Cliff Swallow nests, a few moths and 3 spiders. There is an interesting pinguicula at one of the culverts I am hoping to go back and catch in bloom later this year and maybe look for cool dragonflies in these areas too.

Posted on January 7, 2024 10:25 PM by misspt