when planning my study, radio tracking was one of the components that i thought would be a lot of fun. in theory, it involves attaching a small transmitter to the back of a bat and chasing it around the forest in an attempt to describe its behavior and range. the reality however wasn't quite as glamorous, until i took matters into my own hands to make it so.
the first bat i followed took off on us and upon finding her each day, would switch her roost to keep us doing more guessing than data collection. it was entertaining, but the work itself was kind of boring. a lot of driving in the truck followed by sitting in the truck while she fed, and then driving in the truck back to her day roost early the next morning. not as riviting as the name 'radiotelemetry' leads you to believe.
this second bat however, has been quite a different experience. oh she has definitely spent large amounts of time in one place like the first one, and many nights wouldn't move at all, but instead of sitting in a truck waiting for something to happen, we loaded up the canoe with our gear and set off down the river. paddling to work and practicing radio telemetry from a canoe is much more enjoyable than sitting in a truck, even if we do have to keep our bug jackets tightly sealed. now we just need some bicycles for when she decides to leave the river system.
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