Bats in the belfry

[CauseISaidSo]

Well, not the bellfry exactly, but while sitting on the deck last night with my wife, we saw a lot of activity around the deck stairs and finally realized it was bats.

We’ve caught glimpses of them before, but they were downright swarming then. I grabbed my camera, set it on manual focus for the general area, ramped up the flash, and then fired whenever I saw a rushing blur.

When I looked at the photos on my PC, out of the 60 shots I took, only 4 didn’t have at least one bat in it. One shot had 6. Most turned out really dim or blurry (those suckers are fast), but I thought I’d share the few that turned out decent (and you can bet at least one of ’em will make a contest appearance when appropriate ;)):

[Yugoboy]

That’s cool as &%&*^%*!!!

My wife and I enjoy watching the bats when we go south. We never get to see ’em around here.

[Curious]

generally bats are insect eaters so …. got a lot of insects this year.

nice shots.

[chupathingie]

Holy isht, that’s awesome!
definitely some cool shots!

[linguine]

cool shots, i probably wouldve gotten a bunch of shots with a half a bat in it

[lokisbong]

Most excellent! Those are pretty good shots and like someone above said they eat flying bugs so even better!

[Kestrana]

I love bats. Used to go bat watching in middle school. Looks like Eptesicus fuscus, otherwise known as the unimaginitively named “Big Brown Bat”.

[orionid]

Noice!

[CauseISaidSo]

Thanks everyone.

generally bats are insect eaters so …. got a lot of insects this year.

As far as I can tell though, the insect (mosquito in particular) population is much reduced this year (I’ve attributed it to the cold winter we had). Either way, they can have all of the mosquitos they want. My wife told one of her friends about the bats and she asked what we were going to do to get rid of them! I’m thinking I need to build them a house so they have somewhere to roost.

i probably wouldve gotten a bunch of shots with a half a bat in it

Notice my decent shot to total ratio (6/60)? Yeah, I got several half-bats or just blurs.

Looks like Eptesicus fuscus, otherwise known as the unimaginitively named “Big Brown Bat”.

Might be unimaginative, but it’s pretty spot-on. That’s one of the things that surprised me when I first looked at the photos – the size of some of them! They’re more like flying squirrels than the smaller ones I’m used to seeing.

[ravnostic]

These are awesome. Wish I had bats. 🙁

[Kestrana]

Yep Big Brown Bats are significantly larger than most species and the 2nd largest in North America. But that also makes iding them easier.

[caradoc]

Have you seen these photos?

With a fairly small investment in equipment like a Camera Axe and a couple of IR beam or laser sensors, you could get some really spectacular stuff.

[CauseISaidSo]

I actually did see those earlier, although I think it was on another site. Could’ve been just a similar setup, though, but it was about capturing bats as they swoop down to drink. Pretty amazing shots, but it’d take quite a bit of setup, although as you say, minimal cost.

[LeicaLens]

Nice shots!
The one on the bottom left looks like it could be used for a *Derp* captioned photo.
Your bats are bigger than the ones we get here.

Though not as big as the ones in Gotham.

[orionid]

Have you seen these photos?

With a fairly small investment in equipment like a Camera Axe and a couple of IR beam or laser sensors, you could get some really spectacular stuff.

That’s some rig…. hmmmm……

[Author]

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