Woodard Bay Pier

Woodard Bay Pier

Thursday, July 30, 2009

The colony at Woodard Bay is going through its annual shrinking of numbers, but this is later than most years. There was a drop in numbers last week which has recovered some this week, not at all the normal summer pattern. The draining of Capitol Lake in downtown Olympia, the primary foraging location for this nursery colony, could not have occurred at a worse time for these (and many other ) bats in this area. The sudden lack of feeding area may have caused harm to the local bats, and it could explain the concurrent drop in numbers--likely from abandoned young which probably would not survive a prolonged absence of 'mom.' Nursing mother bats have been documented to leave the young at the nursery colony when food is scarce--so at least one of them survives.

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