Male: One of the real pleasures of living in Arizona is being close to all of the wildlife that surrounds us. Whether you spot cotton tails in the urban park or watch your favorite birds in your own backyard, wildlife is never very far away.
Randy: Well, I want you to thank you folks for coming on out tonight, this is our 5th or so bat workshop that we’ve done maybe 6, and they, we’re sitting right on top of a big flood control structure that runs a mile under the city and there’s about 7000 bats or so that are using this as a roost site. They exit at three different localities, they exit here and we get about roughly about a third of the bat out this end, some nights it give us a great show here, some nights is so, so we can't promise a great deal, but we will see bats for sure.
Male: That’s right, bats, thousands of them right here at 40th street in Camel back.
Randy: The bats in this colony are Mexican free tailed, and Mexican free tails are one of those species of bats that tend to form the largest colonies. Carl’s bat, Bracking cave, the cave you, or the bridge you always read about over in Austin, those are all free tailed bats colonies. Free tail bats are migratory, so they’re only gonna be here for the next few weeks and so on to October, so and these bats are gonna leave just like white wing doves and any of the other birds that migrate here. They’re gonna fly down to Mexico and some of these will go way, way, way down into Mexico. And they’re gonna show up typically they start showing up in April and they reach their full compliment or they’re full numbers by May sometimes. And we’re usually start bat watching workshops about May, mid May or early May to take advantage of the bats and get as many workshops as we can.
Male: The people here tonight are attending one of the Arizona Game and Fish department’s free bat workshops. They’re held throughout the summer before the bats head south for the winter.
Randy: About 80 percent of the bats found in the world are insectivorous and all the bats that live in this roost are insectivorous, so they’re eating moths, beetles, and mosquitoes and all kinds of things that we generally find annoying and often considered pest. And bats are very important that way, some of the bigger colonies eat, like that one out of Carl’s bat cavern or Bracking cave, eats 20 tons of insects a night. And granted, that’s a very big colony but something like this is probably consume several pounds of insects every night, this colony alone.
Male: Besides getting a cool bat poster and other educational materials, participants are also treated to a presentation that will dispel a lot myths about bats.
Randy: They’re animals that are greatly misunderstood. They’re one of these type of animals that the more we understand the better idea we got on what they do and what kind of threat or the role they play in the environment, the kinder we tend to be with them, and that’s the whole idea of this workshop. If you guys get to see them, get to be around them a little bit, learn a little bit more about them, the next time you see bat floating around a light or you end up with one accidentally at home or roosting on your porch you’re not worried about them. Bats don’t bite people, unless they’re handled, we don’t have bats flying into people’s hair or things like that, that’s a wife’s tale, but bats often will fly very, very close to you, so if you’re out and you’re standing around, it’s not uncommon to have a bat fly within a couple of inches of you because he’s catching the insects that attracted to your body heat and the CO2 that you’re giving off, and things like that. That tends to scare people, and again, those bats aren’t gonna run into you, they don’t want anything to do with you, they’re just going about their day to day activities.
Male: Finally, the light is low enough and the bats begin to emerge from the tunnel and the show begins.
Randy: Where are the bats going when they leave the tunnel? They are going to your neighborhood, and so they are going, dispersing all out over this town. No doubt, many of them are feeding right over this canal that is gonna house a lot of insects, they’re gonna drink over the canal, but they’re gonna disperse. Some bats will fly 30, 50 miles or more each night to go out and feed. So they can cover a tremendous distance each evening. And so, they’re the bat, you’ll probably gonna be seeing them around, although this species typically flies high enough to where you generally don’t see them once they disperse.
Male: The Arizona Game and Fish department offers a wide variety of free or low cost wildlife workshops every year all across the state to help the people of Arizona better understand and connect with the wild environment around them.
Boy: Pretty interesting and kinda scary.
Female: Are you scared? What they look like what they really look like?
Boy: No.
Female: What do you think they’re gonna look like?
Boy: They’re gonna look like pretty vicious bats, like in the movies.
Female2: Oh, it’s great, I love to see this things fly around. It’s a really good opportunity for us to seeing them in this, their habitat.
Male: By attending workshops like this, people become more aware of the wildlife that shares our city and hopefully they will use that understanding to make the human wildlife experience a richer and a safer one for both the people and the animals.
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