eBirdseed.com Wild Bird Feeding Blog

Hi all,

Where to begin? Let's see if I can make a short laundry list, and then address the issues one by one...

• West coast reminder
• Nor'easter Noel hits Cape Cod
• My mea culpa concerning the "little brown bat" photo in the October 31, 2007 post
• Discussion with Don Pfitzer

With the list completed, let's flesh it out.

First, lest we forget... The folks on the west coast still could use a hand... Learn more here.

Now, about that storm... Here on Cape Cod, we took a surprisingly hard hit from Noel. We had trees come down, and umpteen power failures. Suffice it to say that it's been an interesting 24 hours.

What's next? Ah yes... Do I have a mea culpa for you! If you take a look at the photo of the bat in the October 31, 2007 post you might notice that something seems a little amiss. In fact there's a lot amiss. That picture is of a big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus), and not a little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus). Here's how we know this...

• As a kid, I spent countless nights watching little brown bats feed. And quite frankly, I remembered them as small things - a little mouse-like body, 8" to 10" wingspan, half inch ears... In short, my gut told me that the photo wasn't labeled correctly, but I checked and rechecked its source, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service... All seemed legit, though in retrospect, I should have gone with my gut.
• The next, (and pivotal) indicator that I had fouled up was a comment left by Mr. Brack suggesting that the bat in the photo looked "suspiciously" like a big brown bat. Excellent work on the reader's part.
• As a third step, the photo itself fell under scrutiny. I started making some rough measurements of the bat's wingspan relative to the man's hand. It became quite clear that the creature was at least 13" across. That's far too big for a little brown bat.
• Finally, I did some research and contacted the photographer himself, Don Pfitzer. He immediately confirmed that the photo in question was in fact that of a big brown bat.

And that leads us to our last talking point... My discussion with Don Pfitzer himself. That was a treat. Mr. Pfitzer has led (and continues to lead) a life far too full to describe in this forum. (Click here to see a brief biographical sketch of Mr. Pfitzer). And the story behind the bat photo was most interesting as well. It turns out that at the time, Mr. Pfitzer was actually studying the fleas carried by bats. Regardless, it's still a great bat pic.

To wrap this one up, I leave you with one of Mr. Pfitzer's favorite photographs, that of a bald eagle...



A much higher resolution version of this picture may be seen at: http://www.animalpicturesarchive.com/view.php?tid=2&did=32659.

See you by those well documented feeders,

CapeCodAlan

P.S. I notified the United States Fish and Wildlife Service... With a little luck, their big brown bat picture should soon be labeled appropriately.