An all-volunteer crew in Mount Solon runs an organization that rehabilitates injured bats, nurses orphaned pups, and teaches the public how to protect these furry, flying mammals. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
[baby bats chirping]
In a small building behind Leslie Sturges' house, the Bat Conservation & Rescue of Virginia team are busy feeding orphans milk replacer and conducting health checks.
LESLIE STURGES: With bats, according to the literature, they have to hit 85% forearm length, compared to adults, before they can really start flying.
Sturges, a former zookeeper and park naturalist, is the organization's founder and president. She notes the progress of one big brown bat pup. Its pointed, fuzzy snout and a delicate little wing peek out of the gloved hand of a volunteer.
STURGES: So, still not at flying size yet, but getting there. That's why we really want to encourage them to flap their wings, because that exercise is very important – pectoral muscles and shoulder girdle – if you're a bat!
Incubators line one wall for the youngest babies. Another room houses older pups and nursing mothers in soft crates – including one Eastern red bat, maybe four inches long, that just gave birth three days before.
STURGES: So you can see she's much lighter colored –
HAGI: Like a strawberry blonde.
STURGES: Yeah, and she's much fluffier, because this is a tree bat. They live out in the foliage.
She was found, pregnant and grounded, with a minor wound on her wrist that prevented her from flying – earning her a stay at the rescue. Sturges picks her up gently in a towel to see how many babies she has nestled on her abdomen.
STURGES: Let me see your belly. [angry bat clicks] I know, bitey bite. Ah! There are indeed three. See them, one, two, three! They're just packed in there. Little baby bat sardines. Sorry mom.
A third room contains a tall mesh enclosure where bigger juveniles practice climbing and flapping their wings. Kavya Parsa, a long-term volunteer, has one of the adolescents hanging on their hand with a mealworm in its mouth.
KAVYA PARSA: That's tucking, so in flight, they'll catch a bug in the air and then they'll tuck it into the tail and catch it, so that's a good practice technique they use! … Good job, what a big bat!
Brooklyn Richardson is a North Carolina A&T student interning here and at the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro.
BROOKLYN RICHARDSON: I come in and I do the dailies, and a lot of that is just cleaning up after the bats and also checking in on all the bats that are here, so checking in that they're good, no injuries, nothing out of the normal.
The rescue takes calls from all over the state from people who have found injured or ailing bats.
STURGES: Can you return it to the colony if there is one? But we can also go by body condition. If it's really thin, then nobody's been feeding it for a while, so mom's probably been predated – often by an outdoor cat.
They also regularly care for bats that were caught on glue traps – they just received five juveniles who survived after being freed from the glue, but their mother died.
The biggest threat to Virginia bats over the last 18 years has been white-nose syndrome, which is caused by a fungus that infects cave-hibernating bats. The fungus was first seen in New York in 2006 and is still moving westward across the U.S. In some sites, it's killed 90% to 100% of the bats there.
Rick Reynolds is a wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources who regularly collaborates with the rescue.
RICK REYNOLDS: It's a fungus that grows into the dermis of the exposed skin on bats. … So it becomes an irritant. … Bats with the white-nose fungus are waking up twice as often as ones without it, and so in that process they're using up more body fat.
Some species have weathered it better than others.
REYNOLDS: Like gray bats and big brown bats that don't seem to be that impacted by it. But then some of our other bats, like tri-colored bat and little browns, Indiana bats, they've been impacted by white-nose, but they seem as though they're starting to make a turn – or at least, they're leveling out.
It's possible the ones that have survived have some genetic immunity to the fungus. Reynolds said researchers have also seen resilient bats putting on more weight going into hibernation.
REYNOLDS: They just build up their body fat going in, knowing that they are potentially going to be waking up more often than they used to be doing.
Outside of the rescue is a gazebo-shaped flight cage, with wooden shelters hanging along the walls, and pool noodle obstacles dangling from the ceiling. Parsa and Summer Assistant Nathaniel Newsom hold up fabric barriers to encourage the bats to fly and be observed in the daytime. One fully-grown bat clings to the fabric, shivering as she wakes up.
STURGES: You can see she's actually much more engaged in what's going on around her now, she's echolocating – ooo, that was good!
She flew off, and immediately crawled into a roost, where Parsa retrieved her.
[angry bat squeaks]
PARSA: I know, I know, I am so mean and evil.
STURGES: So now she's fully awake and she's giving – that is a, "get away from me" vocalization.
Once they can fly with stamina and agility, and take off from the ground, they're ready to be released – and return to their rightful place, eating insects on the landscape. Sturges and Reynolds said we can all help bats by educating ourselves, planting native flora, not using pesticides, and turning off our lights at night.
Find more information about the rescue's upcoming public events at the Edith J. Carrier Arboretum at JMU here.
