Category: Mammal Sightings

Bat Encounter

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See those spaces between the rocks and the flashing? That’s where the bats are.

Last night, right after sunset, my housemate Anita was gazing out the windows of our Austin house. She turned to me and said, “Hey, I see swallows coming out of our chimney.”

“It’s not swallow time,” I replied. “It’s BAT time.” I then briskly went out to see what was going on at the ole chimney.

Sure enough, two sturdy-looking bats emerged from the flashing around the chimney…right where we’d been noticing “mouse turds” for a couple of weeks. I immediately googled “bat guano–images.” Yep, that’s it, all right.

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The tiny black dots on the table, chair, and deck are the poop. I mean guano.

Anita then mentioned that the next-door folks had just erected some kind of wire barrier all around their chimney. Hmm. Maybe the bats just moved one house down.

Continue reading “Bat Encounter”

Coyotes Are Big

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Not the coyote I saw! Free photo from Pexels.

I have a lot to write about from yesterday, but I’ll quickly share this morning’s nature sighting. Alfred the Giant Dog started his alarm barking (different from his “I’m on patrol” barking). The Spousal Unit looked out the window and saw two of what appeared to be wolves checking out the tank/pond behind the house.

We hear them often, but have been seeing them more and more lately, usually at night. This was in bright sunlight, which gave us ample opportunity to get an idea of their size.

The coyotes I see in Austin are usually smaller than our cattle dog, Brody, and look hungry. These were much larger, and very healthy looking. They weren’t as big as Alfred (an Anatolian Shepherd), but not much smaller. They looked over at the house, then just walked into the woods.

As soon as Alfred got out of the fenced-in area behind our house, he did a big patrol of the area. A few deep barks, and there have been more signs of our coyote friends. I hope they are eating lots and lots of mice.