My time here in Shoshone, ID is coming to a bitter end. In less than a month, I will be leaving Shoshone and moving to Boise for a new adventure. The past few weeks have been dedicated to bat surveying and acoustic monitoring. With most of my background in vegetation monitoring, this is an interesting change and I am happy to be learning something new. After a quick scan through the acoustic data, we recorded little brow bats, big brown bats, and Townsend’s big-eared bats. Acoustic monitoring requires the use of a lot of technology that I didn’t have a lot of experience with. We used a recording device called the Anabat which had a GPS, display screen, and a microphone attached to it. Around 8:30pm we headed out towards the Little Wood Reservoir, attached the microphone to the top of the truck and watched the screen to see sudden changes in frequency levels. Though the process of acoustic monitoring is very mild, you may not see many bats, and you are mostly staring at a screen.  It’s amazing when you know you are recording a bat! It gave me a new appreciation for the technology that is available to us to use while monitoring. We were supposed to attend the Eastern Idaho Bat Blitz this week to do more acoustic monitoring and mist netting, but due to weather it was cancelled. Hopefully it will be rescheduled for next week. Besides that, we are wrapping up the season and finalizing some of the nested frequency data from earlier in the season.

I hope everyone is enjoying the last few weeks of summer.

Alexi