Can you say crepuscular? The term, which means active during the twilight hours, was just one of the fascinating facts about bats shared by bat enthusiast Sarah Witcher at the first Bat Walk in the Greenbelt Forest Preserve on September 15. The walk was one of a series of events celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Preserve in 2023, an effort spearheaded by forest advocates Susan Barnett, Paul Downs and local artist Jean Newcomb.
Witcher, a biologist by training who works for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, together with her colleague Katie Dell, a biologist and outdoor educator who works for Baltimore County Public Schools, spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of nearly 50 of all ages, with even the littlest ones, replete with bat ears, chiming in to eagerly share what they knew about bats and bat myths (they are all vampires waiting to suck your blood and give you rabies).
Bats belong to the order Chiroptera, which means “hand-wing.” Their hand is literally their wing, and they are the only mammals that can fly. The first question of the evening was, are bats more related to mice or to humans? The correct answer is humans. A common misconception is that bats are simply rodents with wings. The two main groups of bats are fruit bats, which live mainly in the tropics and help plant new rainforests, and insect-eating bats, which are the only kind that live in Maryland. In one night, a single bat eats thousands of insects, including mosquitoes. Bats are also critical plant pollinators, going to work when bees go to bed.
Passing around enlarged photographs for a closer look, Witcher noted that there are 10 species of bats in Maryland, the most common of which is the eastern red bat, which can fly up to 40 mph. The biggest bat in Maryland is the hoary bat, which has a wingspan of up to 16 inches. Bats can be solitary or live in large colonies depending on the species and are tree-dwelling or cave-dwelling. Cave-dwelling bat species are on the decline in Maryland and across the country due to white-nose syndrome, a deadly invasive fungus from Europe that has completely eradicated the long-eared bat in the state.
Bats in Maryland are designated as species in the greatest need of conservation, and gardening for bats is one key way humans can help. By planting flowers that bloom late in the day, such as evening primrose, purple coneflower, milkweeds, goldenrod and buttonbush, you can attract nighttime insects for bats to eat.
Witcher and Dell then led the bat enthusiasts along a trail in the woods lit by bat luminaries to try to locate bats using a special device called an Echo Meter, about the size of an iPad, to detect and identify their calls. Bats, like dolphins and whales, communicate by sonar with sounds that are at too high a frequency for the human ear to hear. Standing in a quiet huddle in the woods, the efforts of one group were rewarded when a pair of brown bats flew right over their heads.
To learn more about bats and how to help, visit dnr.maryland.gov/wildlife/Pages/plants_wildlife/bats/index.aspx.