I got up a little earlier than usual, and before J, and did some computer work until J got out of bed. I had my usual breakfast and used the last of my first batch of coffee concentrate from the Toddy Cold Brew System. I started to brew another half batch of coffee in the Toddy Cold Brew System and it started to rain lightly around 8:00. It was raining heavily by 8:30. I started to work up a blog entry and the rain stopped by 9:15. We left around 9:45 and ...

Went for a walk, and it was nice to get out of the RV for a little exercise. It was rather humid after the rain though. We dropped off a package at the Post Office then walked up the canyon. J turned around to head back around 10:05 and I kept going.

I returned to the RV around 10:40. I set up my camera to take pictures of some items to eBay, then I took a shower. It started raining again around 11:45, and rained almost all afternoon.

I had lunch around 12:15 and finished the blog entry. Then I went over to the Portal Café to order some sandwiches for J and me to take with us tonight. Then I took pictures of some items to eBay and did some computer work. The rain started to let up around 4:45 — whew. We all left at 4:55.

Bat Photo Tour

We went to the pond and set up our equipment on the other side of the pond to see if we could get more bats flying towards us instead of away from us. J volunteered to share two of her new Vivitar DF-383 flashes so we could get more light on the bats. Those flashes can operate in a slave mode where they're triggered when any other flash goes off, so it was easy to incorporate them into the setup. As Tom was mounting the first of J's flashes by the side of the pond/pool, it slipped off the shoe and fell into the water. Tom immediately offered to buy J a new one. The dunked flash appeared to work for a while, then it started to act up, so we decided to use just the one flash of J's that had stayed dry and was still functioning properly.

After we got everything set up, we ate our boxed dinners (sandwiches) while waiting for the bats to arrive.

All of the bats flew the right direction (towards us) through the beams tonight! We were able to get several shots of bats coming into the pond/pool to drink. My favorite image is of a Southwestern Myotis (left).

We packed up around 9:00 to head down towards the flight tunnel in New Mexico. The plan was for the bat biologists to pack up and head towards the lodge around 9:00 if they hadn't caught any bats. That way we'd meet in the middle somewhere and know that we were done for the evening. If they had caught bats, then we'd just continue on to the flight tunnel and we'd photograph what they had captured.

On our way to the flight tunnel in New Mexico, I was so happy that we didn't meet the bat biologists driving towards us! The clouds from the rain were still almost solid, so I'm sure having them block the full moon helped then capture the bats.

We reached the flight tunnel around 10:00 and found out that we'd have four bats to fly, and each was a different species! :) The first bat was a Lesser Long-Nosed Bat. It's a large nectar feeder, and it was the first time I've photographed one so I was thrilled. He was a good flier, and our agave-blossom props helped create a fantastic image (below left). After we were done flying him, we were able to take some up-close portrait images while Tim, he head biologist, told us about them. The next bat was a Cave Myotis. The little guy made a racket whenever he was being handled, but he was a good flier and we got some nice images of him. My clients were really excited after seeing the third bat come through the flight tunnel the first time. Pallid Bats (below right) have large ears and a pig-like nose, and this guy was a great flier too. Pallid Bats sometimes land on the ground to capture scorpions or large insects like grasshoppers, and we had a very cooperative scorpion to use as a prop. The Phototrap system started to act up, so we took a short break to swap some equipment. We photographed with the new equipment for a while, then that started to act up again about the time we were done flying the Pallid Bat. We took some portrait shots of it perched on a rock while Tim talked about it before we set it free. Because the Phototrap system had more or less stopped functioning, we think because of a low battery, we didn't try to fly the fourth bat, a Mexican Free-Tailed Bat. It wasn't a big loss because it's very hard to get a Mexican Free-Tailed Bat to fly in the flight tunnel because they have narrow wings and take more space to get airborne than other bats. We just took portraits of it perched on a rock while Tim talked about it. The bat is called a Free-Tail because the tail extends way beyond the tail membrane. We left at 1:40 am!

I was still wired up after the excitement of photographing the bats, but J was ready for bed.

We returned to the RV around 2:10 and J pretty much went straight to bed. I downloaded the images I took then downselected them first in iView then in Capture One (C1). I was extremely happy with the images I got! I went to bed around 3:15.