Sometime during the morning hours of June 22, 2023, Amanda Meier came to my door and said she and Judy Gawron  found a bat on the fire road and needed my assistance.  I went to the Hoffmann Env. Center where I got a dip net and a meter stick and headed off to the fire road parking area.  Sure enough, there is the largest Big Brown Bat I had ever seen.   I helped the bat into the net, and got it out of the road.  Since the bat wasn’t flying it was assumed by all of us was perhaps it was injured. Possibly by a window strike.  Fortunately I keep a few small empty boxes in my office since window strikes by birds are pretty commonplace in this vicinity, and I like to have a little Aerofauna “Sensory deprivation chamber” should the situation call for it.  The situation did.

Our next problem arose when we found that the bat had become rather fond of the dip net and made zirself right at home, and would not go into the box.  I was not ready to have a compromised bat uncontained in my car.  As it turned out I keep a hat in my car to lessen the volume of cliff swallow “blessings” upon my head and shoulders whenever I go off to monitor one of the colonies.

With a litttle more “foot massaging” and prodding, we finally got the bat into the hat…bat in the hat.    >: )   Although the bat did not like the hat nearly as much as the dip net, but zi adjusted eventually.

Then I was off in the Aerofauna Ambulance to Mass Wildlife.  The bat was not crazy about my driving either.  I heard a lot of fluttering and hissing for several miles  I finally arrived at Mass Wildlife.  Although cordial enough, it seemed the staffers there were a little lukewarm to the prospect of taking in yet another Big Brown Bat.  Then, as I was leaving the facility, one of the  Staffers Ran out the door and Hollered, “Hey, do you want your hat back”?   Of course I did!  When I pulled back into the parking lot, the staffers were very excited to inform me that the bat I brought in was either a “Silver Haired Bat” or a “Hoary Bat”  both species of which are migratory and live in wooded areas.  They’re pretty uncommon but they do occasionally occur in Massachusetts. After doing a little research, I determined the identity of our new friend at BCC was indeed a Hoary Bat.