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Our Feathered Friends - Birds
Submit photos of the birds, pets, domestic or wild, in the natural environment. Only pictures of natural and alive birds are accepted. It would be nice (but not obligatory) if you supply your photo with the bird's breed name and a short story.
Suggested by Whitman's Images.
Sponsor ACDSee. Sponsor Prizes: 1st place - a full version of ACDSee Pro Photo Manager, 2nd place - ACDSee Photo Editor, 3rd place - ACDSee 9 Photo Manager.
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Each evening during the spring and summer, 10 million pregnant female Mexican Free-tailed Bats fly from a cave on a ranch in Texas to feed on moths and insects. As the bats leave the cave, birds of prey, including Red-tailed Hawks, attack and eat the bats while in flight. Meanwhile, the male bats remain in Mexico and await the return of the female bats after the young have been raised. In an international competition between amateur and professional nature photographers, this photo was recently voted one of the top 100 nature images of 2006.
Place 4
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Good to hear from you after a while and opportunity to visit your site.
Al Perry
Those male bats have a tough life!! Any ideas why the female bats chose that particular cave? Pretty amazing - like much of nature. Like the salmon returning the their own stream to spawn. What does the Free Tailed bit mean?
Peter
As to derivation of "free-tailed", from Wikipedia:
"The family name is derived from a length of "free" tail exposed (usually best seen when resting). A special ring of cartilage slides up or down the tail vertebrae by muscular action to stretch or retract the skin membrane between it (the tail) and the supporting rear legs. This gives many species a degree of fine tuning in their flight maneuvers to rival their day flying ecological equivalents such as Swifts (Apodidae) and Swallows and Martins (Hirundinidae)."
As to why male Mexican Free-tailed Bats stay in Mexico while their wives fly to Texas to have and raise their young, I don't have the answer, so turning the question over to our resident biologist, Les Tension.
Al Perry
Thanks to Mike (aka Les Tension) for his usual dead on prompt answers to biological questions.
Al Perry
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Al.....regarding Peter's question: I'm not positive but
I believe it probably has to do with two phenomena...1) food supply available [insects] and 2) cave space. Over the last 10 years, 95% of the caves bats use
have been lost in Mexico and wanton use of pesticides has caused the food supply to dwindle. Since they need to leave their young behind as they search out food, caves are paramount in importance. So they fly to Texas where the largest bat caves in North America are located. And no DDT to kill the young. If the mother eats pesticide ridden insects, the poison will be present in her milk and will affect the pups (bat babies are called pups). This is just a guess but I think I'm right on.
Mike
Thanks for your comments. I heard about a bridge near Austin, Texas that has many bats, but no, haven't been there. I also heard, but did not witness, snakes waiting to catch bats as they left the cave, but did not see this occur. The bats I photographed in Texas had a relatively high incidence of rabies.
Al Perry
You make a good point---the image should stand or fall on its own merit. My mistake.
Al Perry
~trish~
I hope you will do extremely well!
You have a very nice entry of your own and it is receiving good reviews.
Al Perry
BTW...I just reviewed the vote statistics on this shot. Who in their right mind could possibly give this photo a 4 or 3 or 0? They remind me of a forester who didn't know an aspen from a pole in the ground.