AUBURN, Maine - For nearly 10 years, the news about hibernating bats has been grim. It's estimated that between five-to-seven million of them, 80 to 90 percent of entire colonies in some cases, have been killed by white-nose syndrome. It's a mysterious, cold-loving fungus that affects their skin, ears and wings and has now spread to more than two dozen states.
Scientists don't know very much about bats, which pollinate flowers, disperse fruit seeds and are voracious insect eaters. Of the 1,200 species around the world, just eight types are found in Maine. And there's an initial effort underway to find out where they live and how many there are left.
It's just after 8 o'clock on a warm, summer evening and the darkness is settling on the woods and fields like a soft blanket. In the distance, birds are calling. And Logan Parker has unfurled a map on the hood of his car. We're on the outskirts of Auburn, about to head into a 300-acre park famous among rock hounds for its mineral deposits.
"So we're here at Mt. Apatite and we're going to head in from Mt. Apatite Road and explore an area of mixed forest, and then we're going to approach some old quarries and an old mine because that's potentially great habitat and nothing I've seen yet."
Parker is a volunteer for a new project called BatME, an effort by researchers at the University of Maine, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and Maine Audubon to document bat populations around the state.
As we walk along a trail toward the woods, Parker carries a flashlight and an acoustic bat detector. It's an iPad equipped with an ultrasonic microphone that interfaces with an app on the tablet. The device is able to record high-frequency calls bats make, which can't be heard by humans. It then interprets and identifies the type of bat that's making it.
Parker has been taking it out almost every night for a week. And, so far, he's recorded six of eight bat species in a variety of habitats - about 75 individuals all together.
"The first place I went was the easiest place I could go and that was just because I was curious: I went to my parent's home, which was my childhood home," Parker says. "I just wanted to know what was out there and I was pretty shocked. We had four different species of bats just in that tiny seven-acre lot right along the Kennebec River in Augusta."
Parker also explored a couple of ponds and a bog. This is his first quarry, and a heavily-wooded one at that. After a few minutes of walking, the moon is out and it's time to turn on the recorder. "Instant gratification," he laughs. "Big brown. So, we can keep on wandering."
Those chirping sounds are the software's interpretation of what a big brown bat would sound like. And Parker doesn't need to have to analyze the chirps. The device does it for him, displaying the name of the bat once the call is captured. Big browns and silver-haired bats are the two he's seen most often in his survey. "What a great spot," he says. "This is just perfect habitat for them: wet, buggy, open but with lots of trees around them so they have a nice little flight path."
It's so buggy we can feel the mosquitos bouncing off our faces. And that's just one way bats are beneficial. A single brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitos in an hour. Farmers depend on them to act as natural pesticides and pollinators. At the edge of the old quarry we can see them in the moonlight, swooping and diving for insects. They're using a highly-evolved system of echolocation to bounce sound waves off their prey in the dark.
Parker stops and records the seventh bat species of his survey, one that has been eluding him all week. "That was the northern long-eared myotis which is a federally listed species."
Northern long-eared bats are also on the state's Endangered Species list, along with little browns and the eastern small footed. The state is now working on guidelines for their protection.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Maine are hoping to get more of the acoustic bat detectors into the hands of as many citizen scientists as possible. The idea is to not only to collect data about bats but to get people to lose their misconceptions about them. Only one in about 20,000 has rabies, for example. They aren't blind, don't get tangled up in people's hair and the ones in Maine don't feed on blood.
"I just think that bats are a really interesting and significant species of wildlife," Parker says. "I mean they're - all of them adapted to this nocturnal lifestyle. They're intercepting these insects that potentially carry disease. Yeah, there's a lot to be gained from the little bat."
In the face of white-nose syndrome and the rapid disappearance of entire colonies of bats from attics and barns, Parker says it's been reassuring to detect the ones he has so far. It's just not the same as it was a decade ago when it was common to see bats circling over rooftops, ushering in the arrival of another sweet and sultry summer night.
