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Published: January 22nd 2020
A week after we arrived Remi & I finally found time to make it to an open bank to exchange out money in to Kwacha & were able to pay back the others what we had borrowed! After lunch Esther gave us a Chichewa language lesson - my first but a recap for the others. It is a lovely sounding language.
Monday evening we were taking and hand-netting yellow-bellied house bats (Scotophilus dinganii) from a couple of buildings near camp. Tom & I had to stand at the exit holes holding up the nets for what felt like ages before a couple of bats flew in! One bat managed to escape completely from each location but we caught 8 in total which was the minimum Lena needed for her project looking at wing morphology. After supper we stuck with the batty theme by watching Batman Forever!
Tuesday morning I went out for a walk with Lena & Remi & even though it was early it was getting hot. Most of my day was spent in meetings or repairing a mist net before heading out to do some trapping on the golf course, but sadly the rain made
that impossible so we retired to a bar for a drink before heading home for supper.
I managed to time getting up on Wednesday morning perfectly and arrived at the kitchen in time for Tom to fry me a couple of eggs for breakfast! It was then back to mist net repairs and starting to think about my volunteer article for the newsletter. That evening we went to do some trapping in a private garden in Lilongwe. We got two nets and two harp traps set up by sunset and soon after were swamped by yellow-bellied house bats (Scotophilus dinganii) & dark-winged lesser house bats (Scotoecus hirundo)! We got so many we had to close the nets and release some bats without processing to ensure that they weren’t kept too long in bags. Once we had processed all these bats we reopened the nets and caught a few more of these species as well as three Epomophorus labiatus epauletted fruit bats & 1 death-head hawkmoth - very exciting for me as I got to hold and process my first fruit bat! I was also rather pleased that I managed to get the hawkmoth
out of the net unharmed. To round off this successful evening I also got to see a house snake back at camp. I have one of these cuties as a pet back home so I’m thrilled to have seen one in the wild too.
On Thursday we had to postpone some work due to political protests in town so instead I joined Dom to visit a couple of houses with suspected bat roosts. A large part of the work African Bat Conservation does is to work with homeowners (& other buildings) to find ways to ensure that bats don’t cause them any problems without harming the bats in the process. It’s quite sad driving around the city to see many exterminator adverts listing bats as one of the species they eradicate so it’s great that ABC are here providing humane mitigation solutions. Their work also involves a lot of outreach education schemes to teach people about all the positives of having bats.
We were extremely lucky when we came out of the last house to see the Gule Wamkulu drive past – masked members of a secret cultural society. As it was Sohpie’s last night here we went
out to the local Ethiopian restaurant and shared a couple of platters there – it was very, very tasty!
Luckily Friday stayed hot & dry so I managed to get my laundry done & dried in a day. In the morning Remi & I joined Tom & Angelena on another straw-coloured fruit bats Eidolon helvum count and it was amazing to see that numbers had dropped drastically with only just over 1000 bats presesntand many of the trees empty. Angelena also collected faecal samples from under the trees so they can look to see what the bats have been eating throughout the season.
Lunch was chilli with nsema cooked by Esther – a traditional Malawi carbohydrate made from maize flour. She showed is the traditional way to eat it with your fingers. By itself it has little flavour but is great to add other flavours to. I must ask her to teach me how to cook it!
That evening we headed out that evening to another private house the other side of the city to hand net some bats out of a house. As well as two hand-nets covering the hole we set two harp
traps. Only one of the yellow-bellied house bats (Scotophilus dinganii) that came out of the house was caught, the others being too agile and managed to slip through the gap between the nets. One of the harp traps also caught two tiny vesper bats and one fruit bat which I got to handle. The people who lived there loved having the bats around their garden as they kept the mosquito levels down. We also found a couple of tiny glow worms in their garden!
Saturday morning started with a visit to the chichenje market (traditional colourful fabrics) where I was very restrained and only bought two pieces! We then got some mandazi (Malawi doughnuts) before going to the souvenir market – bit hectic but some lovely stuff – and a couple of less hectic souvenir shops.
After an afternoon off Angelena, Remi & I headed into Lilongwe to follow the straw-coloured fruit bats Eidolon helvum to try to find their night roosts. We checked they were still around then parked up opposite to watch for when they started flying at which point we drove off in the direction the majority took. Many of them
were flying high so likely to be heading out of the city but we found one new night roost tree nearby – albeit very close to one already known. After supper Dom, Tom & Angelena went out whilst the rest of us stayed home playing games (and drinking!) and Lena taught me to play bao – a local variant of mancala.
Lena, Remi & I had planned to go to the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust for a walk on Sunday morning but as it was chucking it down we opted for a quiet day at camp instead. In the evening we headed out to do an emergence survey at a nearby house. Although I didn’t get any emerging from my side I did get to see several flying close as well as several Eidolon flying high overhead heading north. Plus we found the grumpiest looking toad!
(Thanks to Remi for some of the photos!)
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Patricia Wellfare
non-member comment
Great photos
Enjoying seeing all the different species of bat's you are finding, and great photographs to go with the text too. Thank you