Big Brown Bat foraging a couple of hours after the solar eclipse on April 8. © iNat user @hobiecat
Congratulations to iNat user @hobiecat for winning the April 2024 Photo-observation of the Month for the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist! Their photograph of a Big Brown Bat foraging the evening of the April 8 solar eclipse received the most faves of any iNaturalist observation in Vermont during the past month.
Big Brown Bats are year-round Vermont residents. hibernating inside winter shelters called hibernacula like caves, mines, hollow trees, and buildings. In springtime when insect populations return, these bats emerge to feast. In the late evening, they take wing to forage over fields, along forest edges, high in the canopy, and along bodies of water for beetles and other flying insects. This iNaturalist observation shows this particular Big Brown Bat foraging from around 5:15 to 5:50 PM, a couple of hours after eclipse totality. The dusk-like quality of light during the eclipse may have confused some wildlife, including this bat, into emerging to forage early!
With 18,816 observations submitted by 1,560 observers in April, it was very competitive. Click on the image above to see and explore all of the amazing observations.
Visit the Vermont Atlas of Life on iNaturalist where you can vote for the winner this month by clicking the ‘fave’ star on your favorite photo-observation. Make sure you get outdoors and record the biodiversity around you, then submit your discoveries and you could be a winner!
