First Freeze
It got down to 23° last night — our first freeze of the fall season. Time to put away the summer clothes.
Dawn is breaking and I am loathe to look outside and see the resulting damage. I’m sure the Lantanas are gone. I hope the Mt. Lemmon Marigold is hardy enough to tolerate the cold because it was finally at peak bloom and gorgeous. Guess I can’t complain though because we’ve had a wonderful, colorful fall up here with lots of butterflies.
Lately I’ve been experimenting with a new toy — BirdCam 2 with flash. I got it mainly to see what visits during the night. I didn’t need it to determine that Mule Deer were frequent visitors, but last night I was able to confirm that nectar bats are, indeed, still visiting the hummingbird feeder at my office window. The camera grabbed shots from 11:50 PM last night up until 5:20 AM this morning meaning that the bats visited when temperatures were anywhere from 27 degrees to as low as 23 degrees. I think this is a Mexican Long-tongued Bat (look at that tongue!) but am not 100% sure.
Nectar Bat
While the quality of the photo is not what I would get with my DSLR set-up, it certainly beats sitting outside in the cold weather hoping for a bat to come by. More importantly I can now document more night-visiting critters.
Addendum: Just checked the garden. Lantanas took a hit but the Mt. Lemmon Marigold looks okay!
November 30th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Cool capture, Arlene! I hope you capture the owl too.