Gone batty

By BECKY NELSON
Bramblings
We have been scrambling for the last three weeks to finish springtime preparations and clean up some fall chores that we never had time to handle. Near a small “pond” by the raspberry patch that we have always called The Frog Pond, several very tall pine trees reached a point where they caused concern.

During one of the very windy winter storms at the end of the season, a top broke off one of the trees, making us make the painful decision to cut them all down.

As I have mentioned, cutting trees sometimes makes me anxious. My dad was very fond of the pine trees near The Frog Pond, but they shaded an important field used for hay production and left the bales full of needles and pinecones.

I am sure with them gone, the hayfield will thrive and customers are no longer in danger of getting a limb atop their roof when parked to enjoy picking raspberries. Cutting them made for even more cleanup, however.

The big limbs were pushed to the edge of the swampy area and later this year we will cut them up for the maple production. Lots of small limbs and branches and literal bucket loads of pinecones littered the area, however, and it took two days with two of us cleaning up to pull them off the hayfield.

We left big scars in the field when we pulled the logs out of the area, so we had to spend a day seeding and mulching, too. The mulching project stretched late into the day and we had to grab a bite for dinner and head back to the field at dusk one evening last week.

Between trips back to the farm with Ben on the tractor for mulch hay we had used to bank a building, I took the opportunity to take a break and sit on the hillside near The Frog Pond to listen to the peepers.

A couple of different voices were discernible … the traditional squeaky peepers and a deeper voice of some sort of bullfrog type. It was quite a springtime concert and I was enjoying the semi-darkness.

A hunter stopped by, thinking I might be a turkey and using his turkey call even though turkeys had long been in their roosts, but that was the only sound during my rest.

During one of the breaks, I was thrilled to see a bat swooping around, looking for any early bugs for dinner. Thank goodness, black flies and mosquitoes had not yet hit the scene but I was pretty tickled to see the little gal or fellow flying about looking for bugs to eat.

No vampire bats around here, though I understand bats can carry rabies, so best not to handle the little creatures if you find them in your house. Just open the windows and the bat will find its way out where it belongs.

Looking at the NH Fish and Game site, I was shocked and saddened to read that of the eight species of bats living in New Hampshire, four are endangered and one, the long eared bat, is federally threatened.

I have read and heard a lot about “white nose disease,” a fungus that has killed a lot of hibernating bats and reduced the population of cave-dwelling and hibernating bats, but I was shocked to learn that even more bat deaths are attributed to wind power.

It seems that bats travel the same pathways on updrafts of hills that wind turbines rest atop and may even be attracted to the spinning blades. A research paper published by Scientific American says that conservation groups are urging the wind power industry to raise the wind speeds at which the turbines start their spinning, as bats do not fly in high winds and are more frequently killed by the blades at low wind speeds.

Whatever the solution to bat deaths, the little creatures are welcome on my farm and should be welcome in your neighborhood.

The same articles I read said that a bat eats up to half its weight in insects in a night. That’s a lot of black flies, mosquitoes and other flying insects that attack my crops.

So I am happy to see them in the night sky at the farm. If you have a bat living in your attic or barn and want to be rid of them, visit the page at NH Fish and Game for the best ways to keep them out of unwanted areas http://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/nongame/bats-homeowners.html.

While there, check out the pages about the importance of preserving habitat, building bat-houses and keeping the bat population healthy.

It may sound batty to be concerned about these often unseen and often maligned creatures but keeping their environment healthy keeps our environment healthy as well.

Keep flying, my little friends.