(Video Transcript below for your convenience)
Randy Babb: “Well, I wanted to thank you folks for coming on out, tonight. This is our fifth or so bat workshop that we’ve done, maybe sixth.
We’re sitting right on top of a big flood control structure that runs a mile under the city, and there are about 7,000 bats or so that are using this as a roost site. The bats exit at three different locations, including right here. We get roughly one-third of the bats out at this end. Some nights the bats give us a great show, some nights it’s so-so, so we can’t promise a great deal, but we will see bats for sure.”
Announcer: “That’s right, bats, thousands of them, right here at 40th street and Camelback.”
Randy Babb: “The bats in this colony are Mexican Freetail Bats. And Mexican Freetail Bats are one of those species of bats that tend to form the largest colonies. Carlsbad Caverns, Bracken Cave, the Congress Avenue Bridge over in Austin, those are all Freetail Bat colonies.
Freetail Bats are migratory, so they’re only going to be here for the next few weeks, on into October or so. And then these bats are going to leave, just like White-winged doves and many of the other birds that migrate here and they’re going to fly down to Mexico. And some of them are going to go way, way, way down into Mexico. And then they’re going to show up typically in April. The bats will reach their full compliment, or their full numbers by May sometime. And we usually start bat-watching workshops sometime in Mid-May or early May to take advantage of the bats and to get as many of the workshops as we can.”
Announcer: “The people here tonight are attending one of the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s free bat workshops. They’re held through the summer, before the bats head South for the Winter.”
Randy Babb: “About 80% of the bats found throughout the world are insectivorous, and all the bats that live in this roost are insectivorous. So they’re eating moths and beetles and mosquitos and all kinds of things that we (humans) generally find annoying and often consider to be pests. Bats are very important that way. Some of the bigger colonies, like the one out of Carlsbad Caverns or Bracken Cave, eat twenty tons of insects a night. And granted, that’s a very big colony. But something like this is probably consuming several hundreds of pounds of insects a night, just this bat colony alone.”
Announcer: “Besides getting a cool bat poster and other educational materials, participants are also treated to a presentation that will dispel a lot of myths about bats.”
Randy Babb: “Bats are animals that are greatly misunderstood. They are one of these type of animals that the more we understand and the better idea we’ve got about what they do, and what kind of threat, or the role they play in the environment, the kinder we tend to be with them. And that’s the whole idea of this workshop. If you guys get to see them, get to be around them, learn a little more about them, then next time you see a bat fluttering around a light or you end up with one accidentally in your home or roosting on your porch, you’re not worried about it.
Bats don’t bite people unless they’re handled, we don’t have bats flying into people’s hair or things like that, that’s an “old wive’s tale.” But bats often will fly very, very close to you.
So if you’re out and you’re standing around, it’s not uncommon to have a bat fly within a couple of inches of you, because he’s catching insects that are attracted to your body heat and the CO2 that you’re giving off and things like that, and that tends to scare people. Again, those bats aren’t going to run into you, they don’t want anything to do with you, they’re just going about their day-to-day activities.”
Announcer: “Finally, the light is low enough and the bats begin to emerge from the tunnel, and the show begins.”
Randy Babb: “Where are the bats going when they leave the tunnel? They are going to your neighborhood. And so they are dispersing out all over this town. Many of the bats are feeding out over this canal that is going to house a lot of insects. They’re going to drink over the canal, but they’re going to disperse. Some bats will fly thirty – fifty miles each night to go out and feed, so they can cover a tremendous distance each evening. An so they’re the bats you’re probably going to be seeing around, although this species typically flies high enough where you don’t generally see them once they disperse.”
Interviewer: “How did you like the Bat Workshop?”
Bat Workshop Participant One: “Pretty interesting, and kinda scary.”
Interviewer: “Were you scared? Did the bats look like what you thought they would look like?”
Bat Workshop Participant One: “No.”
Interviewer: “What’d you think the bats were going to look like?”
Bat Workshop Participant One: “I thought they were going to look like pretty vicious bats, like in the movies.”
Interviewer: “How did you like the Bat Workshop?”
Bat Workshop Participant Two: “Oh, it’s great! I love to see these bats fly around. It s a real good opportunity for us to see them and their habitat.”
Announcer: “By attending Workshops like these, people become more of the wildlife that shares our City, and hopefully they will use that understanding to make the human wildlife experience a richer and safer one for both the people and the animals.”