Going to great lengths to study LI bats

Scientists who track wildlife end up in some tricky spots -- flailing in mud, swarmed by mosquitoes, teetering at the edge of a canoe.

But the biggest danger encountered this summer by researchers embarking on the first survey of Long Island's bat population was strictly automotive. Armed with a car-mounted microphone, they had to drive Suffolk roads slowly enough -- 20 mph -- to record the sounds of night-flying bats but avoid getting rear-ended by impatient drivers.

Biologist Tim Green said the hazards were outweighed by the benefits of the project, which will help state wildlife officials establish baseline population data for bat species now thought to be in decline.

Some have fallen prey to the whirling blades of turbines at upstate wind farms. Other bats that hibernate in upstate caves are threatened by a mysterious illness known as white nose syndrome. Scientists estimate it has killed more than 1 million bats in the Northeast since 2006.

"Bats have been ignored for years," said Green, manager of cultural and natural resources at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton. "We need to find the information so we know what we have before they're gone."

Scanning the night skies

One night last month, Green and two college students cruised down Whiskey Road in Rocky Point at a stately 20 mph. An 8-inch-long, barrel-shaped acoustic detector attached to the top of Green's hybrid sport utility vehicle recorded ultrasonic calls emitted by nearby bats -- they use echolocation to navigate their surroundings -- and converted the calls to frequencies that humans can hear. Inside, a laptop logged the data and the time and location of the recording.

"That was a good one," said Caitlin White, 21, a student from Miller Place who is studying for her master's degree at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, as she watched the results flash across the screen.

A computer program translates the chirping bat sounds into sonograms. Their shape and height denotes the frequency of each call. On screen, the chirps look like blue comma shapes, scudding atop a fever chart of background noise. About 600 sound clips are recorded each trip, one for each individual sound.

"Roughly 50 to 100 will be an actual bat," said John Cane, 26, a biology student at Suffolk County Community College. "It just all depends on the weather and the wind, and environmental factors."

Scientists upstate will analyze the audio files to identify which chirps belong to which of the nine species found here.

What's at stake for region

Green volunteered to conduct the Long Island surveys after he found a bat laying outside his office door in March.

It was a northern long-eared bat, a species that at that time of year should have been hibernating. Tests confirmed the fungus associated with white nose syndrome. Afflicted bats seem to wake up in midwinter, something that scientists suspect runs down their fat reserves and sends them outside in often fatal searches for food.

"The bat was almost completely emaciated," said Carl Herzog, a biologist with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Scientists still don't know whether the bat spent the winter at an unknown Long Island hibernation spot or flew over from a cave in Connecticut.

The summer surveys predate the onset of white nose syndrome. Biologists had used them to track declines among migratory species such as the hoary bat and the silver-haired bat, which don't hibernate and fly too high to be caught in nets.

The DEC counts cave-hibernating bats a different way, tallying up the numbers that gather over winter in upstate caves known as hibernaculum.

But acoustic tracking can also help scientists measure how those declines play out on Long Island and in other regions where the bats disperse during warmer months to hunt insects in the night skies.

"We expect the counts of the affected species to be as low as elsewhere," Herzog said.

Last month, federal officials said the northern long-eared bat and the eastern small-footed bat may warrant additional protections as threatened or endangered species. Whether they do will depend largely on population data gathered on surveys like these.

A drive to go on

It's slow work, punctuated by hair-raising moments as honking cars and trucks whiz by on dark Suffolk roads.

That night, Green's team started out at 8:57 p.m. -- exactly half an hour after sunset -- from a spot just north of Sunrise Highway in Shirley. Over the next hour they would head north through Yaphank, up to Sound Avenue, back across Route 25A and down through the woods at the DEC's Rocky Point natural resources management area.

By the time the team emerged from the woods to turn down Ridge Road, at least five cars were stacked up close behind, headlights flashing in the rearview mirror.

"People are going to either cheer that I'm turning or cuss because they're turning behind me," Green said.

"This is white-knuckle driving at 20 miles per hour."