{"id":11220,"date":"2014-07-22T09:16:23","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T16:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11220"},"modified":"2014-07-22T09:16:23","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T16:16:23","slug":"bat-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11220","title":{"rendered":"Bat feast"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

It was an amazing experience to sit amidst a horde of hunting bats.<\/p>\n

Derek Kite alerted me to the shoreline feast. For an short intense period in the late evening, the air above a tiny stretch of beach became filled with swift, silent bats feasting on hundreds of mating mayflies. Abruptly it all ended, only to be replayed the next evening.<\/p>\n

Derek and I adopted different photographic strategies. He tried to record bats as they approached and left the feeding area; I tried to capture the action just offshore. Each approach had a remarkably low yield. We were, after all, attempting to photograph small, dark, swift flyers in unknown positions at night. His percentage of somewhat acceptable shots was about 1%; mine was even lower.<\/p>\n

But, what fun.<\/p>\n

In Derek’s first two pictures, the bats seem to follow a line\u00a0of rocks as they leave the feeding grounds.
\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I managed one head-on shot over the water.
\"\"<\/p>\n

And while the bat (and its reflection) is soft, it does show one hunting amidst the crowd of mayflies.
\"\"
Derek Kite’s pictures are used with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  It was an amazing experience to sit amidst a horde of hunting bats. Derek Kite alerted me to the shoreline feast. For an short intense period in the late evening, the air above a tiny stretch of beach became … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mammals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11220"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11237,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11220\/revisions\/11237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}