Every summer, hundreds of thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats roost in the Yolo Causeway and, in the evenings, take flight. It’s a sight that’s attracted Sacramentans and tourists for years.
But you don’t have to make the trek alone: The Yolo Basin Foundation hosts regular bat tours throughout the summer each year, which is when the animal is most active, so that visitors can see it in action themselves. These tours usually wrap up by the end of September, when local bat activity winds down.
CapRadio’s environment and climate change reporter Manola Secaira spoke with the foundation’s program coordinator, Corky Quirk, who’s led local bat tours since 2004. She introduced Manola to one of the foundation’s ambassador bats as well as a tool to hear the sounds the animal makes.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Can you tell me about one of your Mexican free-tailed ambassador bats?
Corky Quirk, a program coordinator for the Yolo Basin Foundation, holds one of the foundation’s ambassador bats — specifically, a brown bat, which is native to California.Manola Secaira/CapRadio
So I don't worry about these bats and disease because they are ambassador bats. They go through quarantine. They get vaccinations. They live without being exposed to wild bats, but I still wear gloves because they are little, tiny wild animals with teeth and they get mad or scared. They certainly can bite.
If you notice the mouth going up down, up down, up down — that is echolocation. She's making her echolocation sounds well above our hearing range. So, my bat detector picks up the high frequency sounds and reduces it and brings it into our hearing.
What the device is doing is, her sound goes in the microphone [and] the frequency is lowered, and it comes out the speaker. We do a little piece in the talk about echolocation and about the difference between communication and hunting sounds, echolocation. Then I'll describe the bat detector and then I bring it out with us on the tour, so if the bats fly close enough, then I can also pick up their sounds and we can all hear it.
Can you tell me what kind of bats we have in Sacramento?
In the state of California, there's 26 species, 17 of which live in the northern part of the state and a good dozen or so could be found in the greater Sacramento area. Some of them are only here during migration, others are here year-round. The bats of the Yolo Causeway predominantly are the Mexican free-tailed bats. And those are the ones that we watch on the tours and the ones that I share the most about during the program.
But we have others. We have hoary bats and red bats that live in our trees, and we have big brown bats that like to live in wood. We have some very tiny species, Canyon bats and California bats, that are just dinky and people think they’re babies every time they see them. We have the pallid bat, which has huge ears and a really charismatic face. So there's a lot of different species around us.
Mexican free-tailed bats begin to leave their roost under the Yolo Causeway at dusk on August 30, 2024.Manola Secaira/CapRadio
What do you think is something that most people get wrong about bats?
There's a lot of mythology out there about bats and also a lot of information that isn't completely accurate. People tend to be afraid of them. Aside from that, there's also concerns about disease. The disease we worry about would be the potential for a bat being sick with rabies.
But rabies is a virus that is spread through saliva. As long as we are not bare-skin handling the animal, we can keep ourselves safe and most bats are not sick. If they get sick with rabies, they will succumb, so they're not carriers.
Can you tell me a little bit about what part bats play in the Sacramento region ecosystem?
Sacramento bats are really important for insect control. We don't have any fruit bats in the United States. We don't have any nectar pollinating species this far north, so our bats are eating bugs. They'll eat a variety of insects, many of which are crop pests. So if you don't like pesticides or insecticides, you've got to love the bats. They just have a huge role in that insect control.
At the end of a Yolo Basin Foundation bat tour on August 30, 2024, Mexican free-tailed bats leave their roost under the Yolo Causeway and take flight. The bat species hunts for insects throughout the night.Manola Secaira/CapRadio
There has to be a reason why you keep coming back to give these tours. What drew you to bats?
You know, they're little mammals. They actually have many things in common with us, but they can fly. They are all quite different than what most people think and I love changing people's minds. So when I can help people understand more about them, learn about their role, learn that they are not animals that are out to get us but actually are incredibly helpful — I feel like I can make a difference.
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