Trip Report - 22 October 2005 Biology Project
Participants: Bill Gee, Eric Hertzler, Wade Baker, Brian Beames, Ken Long
Time In: 9:30am Time out: 8:30pm
Purpose - Count bats, measure guano piles, look for other critters in Carroll Passage.
Trip report by Bill Gee
In late October 2004 we took a trip down Carroll Passage to see what the bats were doing. This year we took the same trip so as to get comparison data. The trip went from the back door entrance to the Mountain Room via Carroll Passage, then back through the Turnpike.
Last year we measured and marked guano piles. There are about 15 or 20 good size piles between the Second Water Barrier and the Lunch Room. This year we set up three "guanometers" to try and get an idea of how much use some of the piles are getting. A guanometer is a length of PVC pipe maybe a foot long. On one end is glued a 4 inch round electrical box cover. This provides a flat surface of constant size. From year to year we should be able to get an idea how much the guano piles are being used.
I arrived at the school house about 7pm Friday night. Wade Baker pulled in about 8:30 or so. Brian Beames arrived after midnight. Ken and Eric came in the morning since they live close.
Our target time for dropping the hole was 9am. We missed that but not by much. Everyone was down by 9:45. The first part of the trip to the Second Water Barrier went fairly fast. We managed to make a wrong turn and see part of the cave twice. We also stopped for a few minutes and took some pictures of formations.
There was a sunfish still alive (barely!) in this section of the cave. I have no idea how it got that far upstream. One theory is that it got washed in from a sinkhole. I don't like that theory since I cannot see how the fish got to the sinkhole in the first place.
The Second Water Barrier was passed and we arrived at the first set of guano piles around 11:00am. I set two of the guanometers and took reference pictures of them. Everyone else fanned out and looked for critters. Eric and Wade kept a running count of bats as we were moving through the cave.
We spent a while looking for planaria in the same stretch of stream where they were first found. We did not find any. It is likely that we did not know exactly what to look for. There were four cave fish in about a 100 foot section of stream, and it is possible they were eating the planaria. This section of stream is just downstream from guano 3.
We started out with five guanometers, but two were broken during the trip to the Second Water Barrier. The first two were set in guano piles 1 and 3. The third one I set in a large cone-shaped pile close to the Lunch Room. Next year I will find a better glue. There are at least three more places where a guanometer could be put.
Last year we left flagging tape markers on about 25 guano piles. I noticed that none of the pieces of flagging tape had much guano on them. They are all close to the edge of the piles, so that may not mean much. I planted the guanometers as far from the edge as I could reach without disturbing the pile, so they should provide better data on usage.
Lunch was in the Lunch Room between 1 and 2 pm. From there we continued on downstream in the Carroll Passage. Eric and Wade continued to keep a running count of bats. We saw several pieces of wood along the way and all had critters on them. We stopped several times to take pictures of formations.
I was expecting to see several large clusters of bats around the entrance to the Turnpike. Instead we saw only four small clusters of maybe 100 bats each. There were no large clusters. Near one of the clusters we found a bat that had fallen but was still alive.
At the Mountain Room we spent a while trying to get a picture that does it justice. We had 4 flashes with us, but that was not enough.
We left the Mountain Room about 5:30pm. Ken Long's left knee was bothering him, so we did not go as fast as we could have. At the Turnpike Ken made the decision to cut off several thousand feet of cave and nasty mud. The trip through the Turnpike took about 30 minutes. The mud bath at the end is still there ...
We arrived back at the ladder shortly after 8:00pm. Ken's knee was hurting him pretty bad, but he toughed it out. It was not a serious injury, just a case of stretched tendons, but it hurt like hell for him to bend his knee. We stopped often for quick breathers.
Eric was the first one up the ladder. He waited for both Ken and Brian to come up so he could help them get off the ladder safely. I was especially concerned about Ken with a bum leg, but he made it on his own power. Brian used one of the cable catches. It did not work at all. He had to haul it up every step of the way. It would not run free. As a result he took 10 or 15 minutes to climb out. Wade and I went last in tandem.
After changing and cleaning up, we were back at the school house by 9:30pm. Mike and Carolyn Hartley were there for the weekend to help with a restoration trip planned for Sunday. Brian, Ken and Eric all took off for home.
Biology findings:
We found three live sunfish. One was upstream from the Second Water Barrier. We saw 6 or 8 blind cave fish. We found a small (3 inches) sculpin a bit downstream from the Lunch Room. At the Mountain Room we saw several large (6 or 7 inch) sculpins. Wade's notes show a total of 7 sculpins.
At the Mountain Room I saw a large crayfish. He was about 7 inches from eyes to tail, not counting antennae. He was moving around quite actively.
We saw salamanders through the whole trip. Wade counted 14 grotto salamanders in all sizes from juvenile to adult.
At guano pile 4 we saw a spider web with a gnat caught in it. There were spider webs on all the pieces of wood we found. The notes show about a dozen spiders. We saw many fungus gnats. The surface of the stream where we looked for planaria had dozens of dead gnats.
One of the wood pieces had two small gray millipedes on it (Tingupa Pallida). We found a millipede perhaps 2 inches long floating in the stream. When we picked it up, it was still alive.
Springtails were on almost every guano pile we checked. At least two different kinds of springtails were seen. There were many beetle shells. We saw ptomophagus and other kinds of beetles. Right at the base of the ladder we saw a ground beetle that had probably fallen in from the surface.
We did not see isopods everywhere. In a few places we found hundreds of them over 10 or 15 square feet of stream bed. The heavy concentrations were all in places where the water was shallow and flowing somewhat faster than normal. Carroll River almost does not flow, so "faster than normal" is a relative term.
On guano pile 5 we saw seven bat carcasses in various stages of decay. There were other dead bats including a stinky one floating in the stream.
Eric and Wade collaborated on species identification. Here are Eric's notes on bat counts:
1 Little Brown 500 feet downstream from the ladder.
1 Little Brown @ Totem Pole formation (roughly 2000 ft. downstream)
4 Little Browns in the immediate area of the formation crawl prior to the
Water barrier.
*12 Little Browns and 6 Pips within 300 ft. downstream of the Water barrier.
5 Little Browns and 1 Pip in the area of the first couple guano piles.
6 Little Browns and 3 Pips from below first guano piles to the last large pile
16 Little Browns and 13 Pips from last guano pile to the 5000ft. marker.
9 Little Browns and 15 Pips from the 5000ft. marker to the 3500ft. marker
3 Clusters of 10-100-and 50 Grey Bats at the 3700ft. marker.
12 Little Browns and 10 Pips from the 3500ft. marker to the 2500ft. marker
15 Little Browns and 2 Pips from the 2500ft. marker to the 2000ft. marker
6 Little Browns 4 Pips and 40 Grey Bats from the 2000ft. marker and the
1500ft. marker
4 Little Browns and 5 Pips from the 1500ft. marker to the 1000ft. marker
4 Little Browns and 1 Pip. between 1000ft. marker and Mountain Room
100 Grey Bats 200 ft. upstream from the Mountain Room
Totals
Little Browns- 98
Eastern Pipistrelles- 60
Grey Bats- 300
Bat count total- 458
I got a good picture of a bat in a pocket on the wall. Tentative identification is Little Brown bat.