I want to thank everyone who attended our "Art in the Open" event this past August 23rd, 2014 in Victoria Park. It was a great bat display, the white LED holiday lights and the floodlights hit our pottery bats hanging (and swinging) in the tree and it looked fabulous.
We were able to hand out all our printed copies of our information flyer on PEI bats and the White Nose Syndrome. If you'd like to view the flyer, you can get access to the PDF (
link here).
At this point, there's not a lot that the average person can do to increase the chance for bat survival beyond trying to help give them good habitat (e.g.
build a bat house), provide food sources (e.g. plants that attract moths that they like to eat), make sure their current habitat isn't being destroyed and keep out of caves where bats live to avoid accidentally spreading the fungus that causes the syndrome.
In the way of photos, the photos we took of the event at night weren't the best, but we did get a few great shots during the initial setup during the day. Thanks again to everyone that helped make the bats and helped with the display.
Pictures below arranged (roughly) chronologically.
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| Hanging the bats. |
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| Lots of bats to hang. |
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| Starting the Art-in-the-Open event. |
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| It was a beautiful summer day. |
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| Great day for spotting (pottery) bats! |
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| One of our many "white nosed" (pottery) bats. |
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| Bats "flying". |
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| Up, up and almost got it! |
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| Right near the start. Lots to see everywhere! |
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| A very distinguished bat. |
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| As the sky darkened, the lights made it easier for us to be found. |
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| Near sunset. |
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| Many pictures of our bats are now in people's cameras. |
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| The lights are starting to be needed. | |
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| Can you spot the (pottery) bat? |
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| Lots of people throughout the evening! |
We've also put in a quick video where you can hear some of the bat sounds we played from a set of outdoor speakers. Bats will "chirp" when they are communicating with each other, and emit a series of sounds when they use
echolocation (using sounds to find object). Bats use sounds in a wide range, some of which humans can hear, some that are too high in frequency for us to hear but can be measured with different equipment.
And as a special treat at the end of the night, we had REAL BATS!
They must have been attracted by the hours of sounds of "bat noises" and came to check it out. Some sharp people in the audience noticed bat sounds continuing when our audio paused in it's loop and I was told that some bats were spotted near midnight.
Here's to hoping we'll have bats continuing on PEI for a very long time.
