Walking into Jan and David Smeal’s horse barn near Turbotville, one doesn’t spot anything unusual until they look up into the rafters. There, snuggled together, are numerous little brown bats.
“They started showing up the spring after the barn was built,” Jan said. “I think that was 14 years ago. They’ve been coming every year since.”
The horses don’t mind having company, and surprisingly enough, neither do the bats.
“I think it’s kinda neat to have them here. They don’t hurt anything,” Jan said. “We have just learned to work around them.”
She is very cautious when feeding the horses for fear she may inadvertently step on one of the tiny mammals, hardly any larger than a bumblebee. When she finds one that has fallen from the roost, she gently uses a stick to nudge it.
“They attach themselves to the stick, and then I just lift it up to where it has to go,” she said.
Sure enough, she recently saw one in the shavings of a horse stall. “Come on little guy, we need to get you back up where you belong,” she said as she reached for her stick. “This is a younger one. They are usually the ones that fall.”
The couple looks forward to their return each year around mid-May. In fact, they try to have their spring hay crop in the barn before their arrival. “We just don’t like to disturb them,” she said. “If you do, they keep flying around close to us. It can get a little eerie sometimes, but they have never bumped into us.”
Their bat colony is now under study. “I picked up a flyer that asked anyone who had bats to report it, and that’s what I did.”
Soon, Dr. DeeAnn Reeder, assistant professor of biology at Bucknell University, and her students visited the summer bat colony.
“We started studying them about three summers ago,” Dr. Reeder said. “This is a small colony of little brown bats. I estimate there’s about 100 females. Some sites have up to several thousand.”
“It is interesting to watch the students,” Smeal said. “They just pick them up and take blood samples. I haven’t picked them up with my bare hands yet.”
Unfortunately, it’s the little brown bat, the most common species of bat in the state, that is being impacted by the fatal white-nose syndrome. “We’re trying to get a handle on it, but I presume the numbers at this site are probably down. We need to check out the site in a few weeks,” Dr. Reeder said.
Summer bat colonies are actually made up of pregnant females. Currently they are giving birth, and Smeal noticed some pups.
“What I like about this site is that I can get a ladder and reach them,” Dr. Reeder said. “Their pelage is strawberry-blonde, which is a different color from others in the state, but it’s just a genetic variation.”
Aside from accessing the overall health of the bats, some were also banded. “Oh look,” said Smeal, “there’s one with a band.”
Dr. Reeder fears that some of the little browns are already harboring the fungus on their wings.
“The fungus is still a mystery,” Calvin Butchkowski, a wildlife biologist who has been working with bats for several years, admitted. “We just don’t know the full impact of white-nose syndrome. It has the potential for the little browns to become endangered. There’s a lot of issues to deal with. Is it pesticides that are making bats susceptible to it? We don’t know, but it really is quite a dilemma.”
Jan Smeal is hoping their little bat colony is fungus-free. “We’re really thrilled they have chosen our barn.”
-- Connie Mertz is a hunter and nature enthusiast from Danville. Contact her at: owcam@verizon.net
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Discussion
Down on the farm: An unlikely pairing
Horses, bats share Valley couple’s barn
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