Working with the Animals

We spent a lot of time last week working with the animals.

Yesterday we finally finished a large job on the roof of a two story commercial building on the east side of Tucson. The Gila Woodpeckers were pecking holes (in the decorative portion which goes around the top of the entire building) and nesting inside of the wall. First we had to attach boards to the top of the parapet wall. Next we attached wire mesh to the boards, and then put weights on the bottom of bird netting and draped the netting over the wire so that it would hang away from the building and go down a few feet. It was A LOT of work! We finished yesterday night at about 8:00 P.M.

This is a picture of the girls and I attaching lead weights to the bottom of the net. By the time the job was done, we had attached over 2000 individual weights by hand, one at a time...UGH!


From the ground, the net was barely visible. Don zoomed in with the camera to the top part of the second floor, and you still can't hardly see it (which is a good thing).


At one point Don had to go out on a wall where there was no parapet, so he put on his repelling equipment. The wind was blowing, and we didn't want him to fall off!



In this picture you can see the boards and the wire on the top of the parapet wall, and the net that we were working on. After we draped the net over the front of the parapet wall, we attached it to the boards and to the front edge of the wire.

It was a big job, and we're glad the girls could spend a couple of days helping us. We would not have been able to finish so quickly without them.

Last week Don took a night to go with a few other wildlife biologists to net bats over the lake at Agua Caliente Park. They needed to determine the species, gender, weight, and wingspan of the bats before releasing them. Don was so busy that he only took a couple of pictures. This first one is a yellow bat (they have black wings) that is being measured.

This is a Mexican Freetail bat.

They netted several species that night and were very pleased with the results of their work.

Bats are really fragile little mammals. They have fur, but their wings (hands) are like a very thin leather. They are amazing little creatures.

This is one of many pack rats that we have trapped and relocated over the last couple of weeks. He's just in a cage waiting for us to take him to his new home.

All in all, we have been very busy. But that is to be expected as the summer is the time that we get the majority of our calls. It's hard to keep up with blogging, but I'm still trying!