Mamba Mountain
Valerie Linden and Sina Weier, graduate students from Germany doing research on the bats in this area shared an exciting bat netting experience with us during a braai last night at Peter and Frances Taylor’s home in Louis Trichardt, South Africa. Valerie and Sina were trapping and netting for bats one night last week in […]
Another bat talk in South Africa
Merlin spoke about bats and their conservation at Ridgeway College in the town of Louis Trichardt in South Africa and was able to include photos of local bats taken on the same day.
Rare Lesser woolly bat caught
Merlin would like to photograph Long-eared bats (Laephotis) catching green stink bugs which are a pest of macademia nut orchards here in South Africa. Koos Steyn has been providing invaluable help in netting and trapping for Long-eared bats on a mountain where they’ve previously been found. But even though the rains have ceased and the […]
Bats eating stink bugs
Thanks to help from a local macademia grower, Koos Steyn, here in South Africa, we finally got approximately 100 green stink bugs, the most costly pest of macademias, and were able to coax our common slit-faced bat (Nycteris thebaica) to carry a couple of them through an infrared beam before eating them beyond recognition. In […]
Guest Speaker at the South African Macadamia Growers Assoc.
We have been in the Levubu Valley outside the town of Louis Trichardt for the past two days, staying with Merlin’s bat research colleague, Peter Taylor, his wife Frances and children, Ben and Robyn, who all have been enthusiastically helping with the bat photography. Our goal here is to photograph bats catching green stink bugs. […]
Visiting the Meletse Bat Research & Training Ctr.
We spent three days at the Meletse Bat Research & Training Center in the Meletse Mountain Valley at a very nice facility owned by Aquila Steel South Africa. This company also owns the nearby Gatkop Cave, home to one of South Africa’s most important bat caves, which it protects along with surrounding habitat in collaboration […]
Merlin’s Talk at the University of Pretoria
On the 7th of April Merlin gave an introductory talk on bats at the University of Pretoria where he had an enthusiastic audience of students and their professors, and the following morning we departed for the Meletse Bat Research and Training Center in the Limpopo Province.
Sterkfontein Dam and Nature Reserve, South Africa
For the past week we’ve been mist netting for bats, mainly Lesueur’s wing-gland bats (Cistugo lesueuri) at the Sterkfontein Dam and Nature Reserve in the Free State Province of South Africa which lies on the northeastern side of the Drakensberg Escarpment, about a four-hour drive southeast of Pretoria. The Kingdom of Lesotho lies west of […]