Ivan's Place
In honor of the greatest moralist who never lived
Copyright © 2004 by Bill Becker

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Bats

This spring I was pleased to see that some bats had begun roosting between my rain gutter and the eave facie board. They are within easy reach, but show agitation only if an observer reaches his or her hand too close. They then open their mouths as if to bite. They are really cute.

Standard copyright rules apply to the pictures below, of course.

My roof line faces directly south, so it gets the full brunt of the hot summer sun. When it's cooler, the bats align themselves in the direction of the eaves/gutter, literally cramming themselves into the "V" as closely as they can. They screen themselves with a wing, much as Bela Lugosi did in the Ed Wood films. As it warms up, and the metal gets hot, the bats align themselves at right angles to the eave line as seen here. When it gets too hot, they might roost on the northside eaves. I think that the bats shown here are the very common Little Brown Bats.

Check out Bat Conservation International for information about bats and about the efforts to save them worldwide.

It's getting warm during the day, and this bat has crawled down to escape the hot metal gutter. When a breeze blew, it raised itself away from the wood so as to let the breeze cool its underside. It's clear that it doesn't take much surface roughness to enable the bat to hang on by its hind claws, barely visible in this picture.

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Page updated June 2, 2006