Free. Member registration required. Space is limited to 12. Meet at the Arrival Garden for your walk.

In partnership with Bats Northwest and the Woodland Park Zoo, Bloedel Reserve is offering a special opportunity to meet a team of bat biologists and conservationists when they set up acoustic monitoring equipment in the Buxton Bird Marsh. The acoustic equipment is installed for one night and collected the following day, and the recordings are used to identify bat species, which have distinct acoustic signatures. The team has offered to speak briefly about bats and their program, and to answer bat questions that attendees might have.

Last year, two bat species were recorded at the bird marsh – the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) and California myotis (Myotis californicus). The number of recorded bat passes at the bird marsh was significantly higher than the other sites that the scientists monitor, and the little brown bat was an exciting species to capture since east coast populations have been decimated by white-nose syndrome, a serious threat to many North American bat species.