Counting Bats in Caves!

2nd day of my new job.

"Want to count bats in caves tonight?"

"YEAH!"

R. Joseph Raab County Park, York, PA.

Adit 1:

Pipestrelle covered in twinkling beads of water.

We counted 1 Big Brown Bat and 19 Pipestrelles.

Adit 5 (second cave):

Crawling through a pipe to get into cave 2.

Eastern Pipestrelles sprinkled over the ceiling. They are so tiny! Only 3-3.5 inches long! We counted 134!

We counted 36 little brown bats in the second cave.

Walking back to the cars, we saw gigantic great blue heron tracks in the snow. Same size as our shoe tracks!

Following Tracks...

Spent an hour following a mysterious looking set of tracks this morning. Our conclusion: one busy raccoon!

Five toes with claws...

Ate a bird...

Walked down lots of fallen logs...

Crossed paths with a fox...

And a squirrel...

Made nice tracks crossing log...

Stepped on a sweet gum ball...

Walked around lots of trees...

Visited the beach...

All before her tracks got lost in the water. Busy Raccoon!