ESTESBOG

This little wildlife drama was photographed and described to me by fellow photographer Mandy Colburn of Fort Morgan. Mandy’s 11-year-old stepson, Ouray Ocanas, is an exceptionally observant nature nut who seldom misses an interesting snake or bug or mammal in his wanderings.

            One day last summer Ouray noticed the family pack of weiner dogs were excited about something on the back lawn. Going to investigate, he spotted a gray and black object in the grass and it was moving. It was a baby bat. Assuming it had lost its mother, and knowing enough about bats to realize he probably shouldn’t handle it directly, the boy put on some heavy work gloves to capture the little bat and put him in a terrarium. He figured that the baby bat’s mother could access the baby through the open top and the little animal might be at least somewhat protected from cats and other small terrestrial predators.

The mother bat came close, but apparently was unable to maneuver into the terrarium. She got as close as she could and wouldn’t leave the tree branch above her baby.

So the next morning Ouray Ocanas Ouray placed the baby bat on a low branch. The mother bat went to it immediately. The first order of business was to feed the little one who had not eaten for almost 24 hours. The mother bat embraced her offspring affectionately as it suckled and seemed not to mind the proximity of the two humans. Once the babe was satisfied, the adult bat took it up into the foliage and disappeared.

The bats that Ouray Ocanas assisted were hoary bats, a large but little known species widely distributed in the New World, even in Hawaii. Full grown hoary bats are about 5½ inches long and beautifully marked with warm, reddish-brown faces outlined in black and silver-tipped body hair. Their wing membranes are black against flesh-colored limbs.

Hoary bats are migratory. They mate in fall, but females are able to delay implantation of their (usually two) eggs in the womb so as to time birth for mid-summer when large insects (moths, grasshoppers, and beetles) are most abundant. Females usually travel up into mid-latitudes to bear and rear their young while the males travel much further north and segregate from females through the summer.

Only a few hoary bats live in caves alongside other bat species. The majority live solitary lives in trees, either deciduous or coniferous. Daytime roosts are well concealed from above but open beneath to facilitate quick escape.

In Mammals of Colorado (1994. Denver Museum of Natural History), authors James P. Fitzgerald, Carron A. Meaney, and David M. Armstrong state that, until a female hoary bat with young was observed in Greeley, it was thought that this species only migrated through eastern Colorado and did not reside or raise young here.

Ouray Ocanas’ findings and Mandy Colburn’s photography are additional proof that hoary bats are part of the fauna of Colorado’s eastern plains.

Thanks, Mandy and Ouray, for sharing your experience with estesbog.com.