Silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans)

I have worked with many different species of bats through the years and there are some species that can be challenging to distinguish from one another. Primarily, the small myotis species can look very similar - however, as I spend more time with bats it becomes clear that most are uniquely interesting (such as my favorite the spotted bat). One such bat is the silver-haired bat:


Silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans)

Their name is derived from the frosty patch of pelage that runs along their back. There can be considerable variation in adult fur color and the "silver hair" is most visible in the darker individuals.


Silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans)

I have come across these bats on many occasions, but have found it frustrating to try and get good images of them. Mostly, I think, its their contrarian personality. When I try to get portraits they fly away. When I try to get flight shots, they decide to remain on their perch. No other bat has ever given me such a difficult challenge when trying to get images.

Yet they have a lot of personality - and an expressive face.


Silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans)


Silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans)

I finally found a silver-haired bat that was a willing subject - thanks to Barb Ogaard, a bat specialist and rehabilitator. This little bat was a fat, happy, and just getting out of rehab. And she was more than willing to exercise her wings in preparation for her upcoming release back into the wild.

Silver-haired bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans)

Rock Art Of The First People

My grandfather was a member of the Confederated Tribes and Bands Of The Yakama Nation, but strangely we did not discuss my native american heritage much. He was half Cherokee and abandoned by his father at a young age. He grew up in a time when a native american man would struggle to find a good job and I think he learned not to mention it. He had the olive/tanned skin of the tribe, but his blue eyes were enough to throw off suspicion of his lineage.

It was later in life that he began to celebrate the pride of his bloodline, and he would occasionally tell me stories of the 'First People'. These were the fables that often explained the geology of the landscape, or the behavior of animals with a rich mixture wit and character.



I'm not sure if this is the origin of my fascination with the scattered bits of rock art that survive in the West, or it just an appreciation for the deep history of they represent. Nonetheless, when I see a gallery of ancient rock art I feel instantly connected to the past, and I try to imagine the man or woman that worked the surface of a rock to imbue it with meaning. Perhaps the meanings are practical (such as a warning or a marker indicating the direction of good fishing) or magical (a prayer for good hunting) but time has removed our understanding.

The work seen here are all from the Columbia River Gorge. Some are from well hidden galleries that have mostly survived by their difficult locations.



Others are famously accessible, and have survived attempts at vandalism and defacement.



I was guided to this (below) remarkable pictograph/petroglyph by a geologist who asked that I never reveal the location. It has the most striking and preserved color that I have seen in Columbia River Gorge rock art.



Much of the rock art is believed to have been etched into the rock between 1000 and 3000 years ago. Some places have whole galleries of work that were probably worked on for generations.



There was a famously rich collection of indigenous rock art in "Petroglyph Canyon" along the shores of the Columbia River. The entire canyon was flooded by the construction of The Dalles Dam in 1957. However, in the months before the water was to rise, the Army Corps Of Engineers removed some of the most interesting and complex pieces and placed them in storage until 2004 when the "Temani Pesh-wa" trail (also "written on rock" trail) was created in Columbia Hills State Park on the Washington side of the Gorge. Below are a three examples from the trail.







Then there is the legend of "She Who Watches" or "Tsagaglalal". The trail that leads to this remarkable example of rock art is now closed except to guided tours because of problems with vandals. I heard about this famous petroglyph as a child when my grandfather told me of it. I have hiked in to see it several times, but a few weeks ago I brought my wife and daughter along on a guided trek. One woman who joined the group had been wanting to see Tsagaglalal for years and she had traveled from the mid-west just to do so.



There are several stories behind She Who Watches. The most widely told is as follows: A woman had a house where the village of Nixluidix was later built. She was chief of all who lived in the region. That was a long time before Coyote came up the river and changed things and people were not yet real people. After a time Coyote in his travels came to this place and asked the inhabitants if they were living well or ill. They sent him to their chief who lived up on the rocks, where she could look down on the village and know what was going on.
Coyote climbed up to the house on the rocks and asked "What kind of living do you give these people? Do you treat them well or are you one of those evil women?" "I am teaching them to live well and build good houses," she said.
"Soon the world will change," said Coyote, "and women will no longer be chiefs." Then he changed her into a rock with the command, "You shall stay here and watch over the people who live here."
All the people know that Tsagaglalae sees all things, for whenever they are looking at her those large eyes are watching them.
-"Stone Age on the Columbia River" by Emory Strong, 1959

Oregon Spotted Frogs

I am sick of the rain. I grew up in Oregon and can revel in the wet weather, but this late winter and spring have been wetter than most, and I'm tired of the gloom.

In one of the few lucky breaks of sun that we have experienced lately, I made my way up to Mount Adams for a survey of oregon spotted frog egg clusters. Spotted frogs have declined in recent years due to a variety of reasons – some obvious (non-native frogs like bull frogs, wetland development) and some mysterious. They are not that easy to spot, but they are usually just under the surface so polarized sunglasses can help a lot.

Below, biologist Howard Browers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service looks for egg masses

I had a chance to use my home-made underwater robot camera to grab a shot of the eggs just below the surface.

The the embryos develop faster in warm temperatures and on a sunny day the eggs nearest the top will grow faster than those at the bottom.

A gelatinous sticky mass holds the eggs together, and the embryos within the egg appear black. 

Occasionally you will even see an actual frog such as the juvenile being held by research scientist Mark Hayes. 

The population of oregon spotted frogs in this lake refuge has declined precipitously in the last few years for reasons that are still unclear. 

Finding Bats

Bats are not easy to find. They spend their nights in the air hunting for insects, and as day approaches they will find the most inaccessible places to wedge themselves into. For many species, this day time roost might be in a new spot every day. This is a problem if you want to study bats, and biologists are finding a variety of creative ways to locate bats.

Enter the Bat Dog.



CJ, a chocolate lab working as a trained wildlife detector dog, tries to find bat roosting sites along with his handler, wildlife technician Elisabeth Mering in the Coconino National Forest in Arizona. Note the gps unit that will track CJ's evey move.



Once CJ detects the sent of bat guano, he will alert.



Here, tucked under the bark of a dead ponderosa tree is a maternity colony of allen's lappet-browed bats. It looks like chaos, but there are about 17 bats crammed together in this tiny spot.



As night falls, they slowly pop out from under the bark and head out into the night.



Little is known about this rare species.

Photomerge and the Forest

Photoshop has been a trusty piece of software for me since the 90's, and through it s various incarnations I have diligently learned its new features and workflow improvements. One thing I have always struggled with, however, is the "photomerge" feature. Even when I would carefully shoot a scene for stitching together later, I often found that "photomerge" would not quite line up edges correctly and I would end up doing the work by hand using layers.

Not anymore. Photoshop CS3 has made a startling improvement in the algorythm that combines mutliple images into one, large final scene. One of the great challenges for "photomerge" was any busy, complex scene that had complicated tones, textures and color - like a forest scene.

I dug around in my archive for images I had shot for "photomerge" but had never actually combined successfully - nor had I taken the time to do so by hand.

An example: The History Channel sent me to Malaysia last year. The rainforests on the peninsula are hot, steamy and ancient places with asian elephants and tigers hidden in the thickets. Like any forest, it can be quite challenging to make interesting compositions. Add three or four leeches that unavoidably find their way onto your body, and you have even more distractions. I never could get these images to stitch together until CS3.



More recently I ventured into the Columbia River Gorge during an ice storm.



The contrast between the frozen forest and the tropical jungle is interesting.

While the "panorama" is the traditional method for composing stitched images, I often will also make four or more exposures into a larger square. These become impressively detailed image files.





Again CS3 made the process painless and gave very satisfying results.

Learning By Failure

I have been doing this kind of work long enough to know better. It seems like a sure-fire, can't miss photo opportunity. And then, It doesn't work out quite like I imagined.

In this particular instance, I was primarily defeated by weather. The elk carcass mentioned in the previous post was certainly attracting predators, as this wet and bedraggled red-tailed hawk can attest to.



However, the buckets of water falling from the sky combined with high winds meant that water was finding its way into bits of equipment that it normally doesn't. Nothing was damaged, and these camera systems have survived pretty harsh weather before - but several connecting cords were shorted out by water, and a flash sync cable was disconnected by the swaying of tree limbs during high gusts of wind.

Is too bad because there were several nocturnal visitors to the elk, but the cameras recorded black frames. bummer.

I need to re-think my cord and connector arrangement.

When the system failed, it made a last gasp by recording an image in the middle of a nocturnal rain shower.



Please forgive the morbidity of the subject.

Winter Kill

It has been a stormy and cold winter along the coast. I can't be sure if it was the hard time of year, or disease that killed this juvenile, bull elk – but it does not appear that a predator killed it.



Now it is time for the scavengers. When I arrived, it was obvious that they had already started to feast on the carcass. Probably coyotes and raccoons at night, and hawks and eagles by day. In between hail storms, I set-up three, motion-sensing cameras in the muck and mud around the elk to photograph the scavengers.



It will be interesting to see what the cameras record.

Stay tuned.

Coho Run

Coho Salmon have just ended their run to spawn in the various streams and tributaries along the Pacific Coast. Neal Maine and Katie Voelke from The North Coast Land Conservancy were kind enough to give me access, and guide me, to a stream on their property where the Coho spend the last few days of their life breeding and building redds for their eggs.



The stream flowed through a dark patch of forest, where the fish chose to spawn. It is surprising to see such large fish in such small water.



Once they return to fresh water from the ocean their bodies change rapidly. First they turn red, and then very quickly they begin to deteriorate. Males battle for access to eggs while females vigorously fan oxygen over the egg beds. All the while they get more scraped and torn up.



Despite constant rain and gloomy light, I spent hours watching the coho before I could figure out how to take photographs. This was an interesting opportunity to use my remote underwater camera. I controlled the camera position from the stream bank, and could observe the camera's viewfinder using a video monitor. I overpowered the darkness of the forest by using a radio remote (submerged with the camera) to trigger flash units stationed above stream. High water and storm debris made the water slightly cloudy.

But still, I'm pretty happy with resulting images.



The eggs will hatch in Spring - long after the adults have given their lives for the cause.

Cute Little Long-Eared Mouse

My friend BPaul over at the Institute Of Jurassic Technology blog pointed out this little story on the BBC about an An "extraordinary" desert creature has been caught on camera for what scientists believe is the first time. The long-eared jerboa from the Gobi Desert



Well its not as quite as cute, but Oregon has the Pinyon Mouse - a long-eared mouse that likes to eat juniper berries and requires rocky habitat to survive. I photographed this little fellow near Clarno, not far from OMSI's Hancock Field Station.





Incidentally, this is one of the last photographs I took using film.