wildlife photography

Timely New Children’s Book

Books

09/03/20
By Merlin Tuttle

Life Upside Down

Australia’s Grey-headed flying-foxes

Leading wildlife photographer and conservationist, Doug Gimesy, has teamed up with award-winning media graphic artist, Heather Kiley, to produce an outstanding introduction to the upside-down world of grey-headed flying foxes. Through stunning photography, simple text, and eye-catching design, this book provides a timely introduction to some of the world’s most frequently misunderstood and intensely persecuted animals.

Victims of misunderstanding and mass eradication attempts, Australia’s flying foxes now survive only as tiny fractions of former numbers. Forest clearing has left them homeless and starving. Countless thousands have been killed in mass shooting campaigns, electrocution grids, and flame thrower attacks on their roosts, known as camps. Remnant survivors are now forced to live in cities where they are needlessly demonized as carriers of dreaded diseases, despite a long history of living safely with people or subjected to attempts of forced eviction with nowhere else to go. Welcomed honeybees, dogs, and especially humans are far more dangerous! Moreover, large numbers of flying foxes are essential to reforestation and the survival of much-loved animals such as koalas.

Readers of Life Upside Down will be introduced to the real world of flying foxes as safe and invaluable neighbors and learn how they can be helped. This full-color, large-format, 48-page book is available in hardcover for $19.95 at Australian Geographic or at Book Depository.  

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Thai Adventures Part 4: Khao Chong Pran

Conservation, Field Work/Photography

2/19/20

By Merlin Tuttle

For me, our trip highlight was the visit to the Khao Chong Pran Cave in Ratchaburi Province. Nearly 40 years ago Buddhist monks who owned the cave had asked my advice. Their monastery relied on bat guano fertilizer sales for support. But in 1981 production was plummeting. Of course, and the monks wanted to know why.

Merlin and Surapon reminiscing about their first visit to Khao Chong Pran Cave nearly 40 years earlier.

Before dawn the next morning, my then young field assistant and interpreter, Surapon Duangkhae, and I discovered poachers using large fish nets to capture bats at the cave entrance. They were selling them to local restaurants. We hired two of the poachers to help us document the extent of the problem, then advised the monks to hire a game warden to protect their bats.

Merlin answering game warden’s questions in 1989.
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Thai Adventures Part 3: Cave Bats

Conservation, Field Work/Photography

12/26/19

By Daniel Hargreaves

We arrived at sunset at the OurLand Nature Reserve in Kanchanaburi Province, our home for the next 5 days. We quickly set up a few mist nets and a harp trap and were rewarded with a brace of lesser false vampire bats (Megaderma spasma) and several cave nectar bats (Eonycteris spelaea). Merlin took the opportunity to show the group how to train a bat. Unfortunately, the chosen bat was unusually difficult. However, just over an hour later it eagerly permitted Merlin to approach, enticing it to drink from a syringe filled with sugar water.

The next morning, we climbed 200 steps in search of roosting bats located in two caves above a monastery occupied by Buddhist shrines.

Group climbing the steps to the cave with Kate in the lead.
Group entering cave.
Daniel Hargreaves showing the first tiny bumblebee bat to our group.

Initially, we captured a long-winged tomb bat (Taphazous longimanus) but as the group was looking at that one, I netted two bumblebee bats (Craseonycteris thonglongyai). Both were females weighing around two grams. They were delicately held by group participants while I explained the species’ anatomy, ecology, and conservation status.

Mindy excited to be holding a famously tiny bumblebee bat.
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Thai Adventures Part 2: Flying Foxes

Field Work/Photography

1/21/20

By Daniel Hargreaves

Several hours after leaving the painted bat village, we arrived at the Wat Chantaram, Buddhist temple, in Ang Thong province. The monks protect Lyle’s flying foxes (Pteropus lylei) in the courtyard. We explained the ecology and diet of the species and how the group should approach the colony to minimize disturbance. Slowly approached, most of the bats remained calm allowing us to watch them grooming as they prepared to depart for the evening. The bats steadily increased their activity and their chattering became louder as they started to fly out in all directions, leaving the temple grounds in search of fruiting or flowering trees. As the bats were leaving, we could hear the monks chanting inside the temple providing a magical backdrop to the evening.

Lyle’s flying foxes (Pteropus lylei) in Jantraram Temple courtyard, protected by monks in Thailand.

The following morning, we headed to Bang Pahan village in search of a second Lyle’s flying fox camp (a colony roosting site). The bats had set up camp alongside the river and after several attempts we discovered a spot where we could get closer.

Our focus was on photographing these roughly four-foot wingspan bats as they flew among roost trees. These weren’t as well protected, and something had made them nervous. They had a right to be, as some had wing membranes were perforated with holes from apparent shotgun pellets. Our group looked in awe as hundreds of these flying giants took to the sky, moving farther along the river.

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Bats: An Illustrated Guide to All Species Gains Top Reviews and Sales

Books

7/1/19
By Merlin Tuttle

The American version of BATS: An Illustrated Guide to All Species, published by the Smithsonian Institution, sold its first print run of over 5,000 copies in just three months. It also received high accolades from the science journal Nature and a prestigious Star Award from the Library Journal. The Library Journal verdict? “Far beyond the practical value of a guidebook, this is an important update to bat literature and one to savor, containing a wonder on nearly every page and proving that bats are indeed ‘intelligent, curious, comical, even essential animals.'”

A painted bat (Kerivoula picta) in Thailand.

 

The science journal Nature reported, “This guide by writer Marianne Taylor and bat conservationist Merlin Tuttle shines a light on the order Chiroptera, from the wee Kitti’s hog-nosed bat (Craseonycteris thonglongyai, a candidate for world’s smallest mammal) to the ‘megabats’ of the Pteropodidae family. Meshing deft scientific text with Tuttle’s sumptuous images, it’s a superb introduction to the baroque morphologies and flying prowess of these beguiling beasts.”

A greater mouse-eared bat (Myotis myotis) catching a katydid in Bulgaria.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Formosan Golden Bats’ Home to Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science

Conservation, Field Work/Photography

After taking over 1,500 photographs, here are some shots from the Formosan Golden Bat’s Home.

After completing work at the Formosan Golden Bats’ Home, Merlin traveled to Taichung, the second largest city in Taiwan, to speak at the National Museum of Natural Science. (more…)

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Finding bat roosts in Trinidad

Field Work/Photography

Our digital and social media coordinator, Teresa Nichta, is learning firsthand the challenges of bat photography, whether in the studio or in the wild. This is her experience in her words.

I already knew I would love the rain forest; it was so massive yet I felt right at home.

Documenting where bats live was a major objective of this trip, and that was just what we did!  Of course, I’d seen Merlin’s photos and learned about what we were looking for but seeing bats at home in the forest in person was even more enthralling than I had imagined. Bats are nearly everywhere but they’re seldom seen because they hide so well. (more…)

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Good press for bats!

Books

Minor epauletted bat (Epomophorous labiatus minor) from Kenya. Hip hip hooray, more good press for bats! First the Wall Street Journal did a glowing review of Merlin’s book, “The Secret Lives of Bats,” and it made Amazon’s Top Ten of the Month list; then our hometown paper, the Austin American-Statesman wrote about the history of Austin’s bridge bats and the role Merlin played; and now an article by the Huffington Post about Merlin and his passion to reveal the truth about bats, the world’s most misunderstood mammal!

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Amazing woolly bats revisited

Field Work/Photography

Cover ScreenshotA year ago Merlin and I had the wonderful privilege of joining Caroline and Michael Schöner to photographically document their research discoveries of tiny woolly bats living in pitcher plants. To read about our work with the Schöners in Brunei, see our September 2014 blogs Woolly bat personalities and Fanged pitcher plants and other shelters.

As they are finally nearing completion of their PhD theses of these bats, their discoveries are finally getting the attention they deserve. One of the things we weren’t able to mention earlier was their discovery that the pitcher plant (Nepenthes hemsleyana) has, like the flowers we documented with Ralph Simon, developed special echo-reflectors to help guide approaching bats. Not surprisingly Ralph ended up joining them in this new discovery.

This has been one of Merlin’s favorite stories. He especially enjoyed working with these tiny bats that attempted to train him to feed them in response to their getting in his face, as you can see in the video posted in the September 2014 Woolly bat personalities blog.

The Schöners’ latest research paper is now published in the July 20, 2015 issue of Current Biology. One of Merlin’s photos is on the cover, and Ralph Simon is a co-author.

Bat researchers, Michael and Caroline Schoner, wading through a Borneo peat swamp, searching for bats roosting in pitcher plants.
Bat researchers, Michael and Caroline Schoner, wading through a Borneo peat swamp, searching for bats roosting in pitcher plants.

 

 

 

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