White-Nose Syndrome in bats:
Personal Notes
Following are a selection of communications we've received about the white-nose syndrome mystery and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of bats.
-----
NOT an official blog of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Midwest Region
-----
March 23, 2009
The following is a brief summary of the progression of WNS at the major bat hibernacula in Massachusetts.
The largest hibernacula for bats in Massachusetts has always been the Old Mine in Chester, Hampden County, MA. We have often referred to this site as the upper Chester Mine. This site was operated off and on from 1856 to 1913 and was acquired by the state fish and wildlife agency in 1974 to protect bats. The agency acquired the second largest hibernacula in Rowe, MA in 2007 which is also affected by WNS.
The mine includes about 2,300 feet of tunnel on two remaining levels. The third and lowest level is completely flooded. Since 1976 the agency has conducted 13 bat surveys, but most of these have been confined to the uppermost level of the mine. The lower level includes two sections of tunnel that can only be reached by rappelling into each of two 92 foot holes, so the entire mine has only been surveyed twice in past years (1986 & 1999).
As far as we know, the bats at this site were healthy until last winter (2007/08) when the neighbors at the bottom of the hill (1,250 feet away) reported bats flying around their yards in early February. A visit was made on February 15th which was a sunny day above freezing with temperatures expected to fall into the teens that night. One bat was seen flying around town about half a mile away, several bats were flying up and down the road in front of the three houses nearest the mine, about 15 bats were seen gathered and grooming in the sun on a gently sloping roof of one of the houses, and about 20 dead bats were picked up around the foundations of the three houses that had apparently died over previous freezing nights. Some of these carcasses were sent to the National Wildlife Health Lab in Madison, WI. The flying and grooming bats are seen very well on the U Tube tape that Susi von Oettingen made that day. One bat that landed in the road and could not take off again was examined and its wings were found to be so dehydrated and brittle that they could not be fully extended without tearing the membrane. On the way to the mine, one bat was found dead in the woods on the snow, but no bats were found dead near the mine entrance. One scat from a fisher with the bones of four bats was found in the snow not far away and a pair of Northern Raven and a single Red-tailed Hawk seemed to be lingering nearby. One to three bats were flying in and out of the mine entrance or in the clearing in front of the mine during our half-hour stay. Since concerns were expressed that we should not disturb the bats or risk contaminating other sites, it was agreed that we would not conduct a survey.
The bats at this site, in decreasing order of abundance, have been Myotis lucifugus, M. septentrionalis, Pipistrellus subflavus, and occasionally Eptesicus fuscus and M. leibeii (maximum of 5). The last Myotis sodalis reported from this site in 1939. In March 1986 a total of 2,896 bats were counted in a complete survey of all levels, and in 1999 there were 7,320. If the numbers at this site tracked increases seen at other nearby mines, the total number of bats in 2008 should have been between 10,000 and 11,000.
On February 2, 2009, a full year after WNS was very evident at this site, the upper tunnel still had 1,013 bats but by March 13, 2009 it only had 44. A survey of the entire mine on March 13th, including both lower sections, revealed a total of 116 bats (108 Myotis lucifugus, 6 P. subflavus, and 2 M. septentrionalis), virtually all of which were visibly contaminated with fungus. Only one fresh dead pipistrel was found on the snow outside the mine but three Great Horned Owl pellets under a nearby White Pine were full of bat bones and there were fresh Raccoon tracks in the snow. Considering the amount of fungus on the remaining bats and the rapid rate of decline over the past month, it is quite likely that nearly every bat at this site will be dead before spring emergence.
Thomas W. French, Ph.D.
Assistant Director
Division of Fisheries and Wildlife
Massachusetts
-----
The Bat
by WL, Chester, Mass., age 10
All day we think of it like a mouse
But at night it creeps out of your old house
All day it hangs by the opposite of its head
Its pulse is so slow we think of it as dead
It flys like as if it is trying to tie
You only see it out of the corner of your eye
We think of them as foe
But really we hate to see them go
-----
"we live in new york state, in the FINGERLAKES area, . . . what we are missing is the incredible number of bats we used to see flying out of our house at night. they seemed uncountable. last summer we hardly saw them."
-----
|
