I was sitting outside in the early evening, just as the sky turned dark royal blue but still with some contrast and visibility. This was a magic and serene moment, even with the constant loud rasping of crickets.
I love that sound, so I was listening intently to the sound coming from seemingly every direction near and far. I was trying to isolate the sounds from crickets down in the creek bed near my place and ones from the other direction, across the street and in my own yard.
The whole satisfying moment was shattered by sudden split-second silence. As quick as you can snap your fingers, all crickets within my hearing range went deathly silent. I didn’t hear anything that could cause such an immediate reaction around the entire neighborhood.
It was too dark to see very much, so I doubted the crickets saw anything. Turned out I was wrong about that. While looking all around, I looked up at the sky and opened my eyes wide to take in all the dim light I could. While staring at the sky I noticed blazing-fast furtive movements. Things were moving like a bat out of hell up there.
Suddenly the light bulb went on in my mind. Bats! Somebody around here has bats in their belfry (maybe in more ways than one) and those skyrocketing critters were out taking up the hunt in the early evening’s twilight.
This reality was obviously not lost on the crickets and probably many other insects. When bats are hunting, it is a bad time to be a bug. Bats have natural low-light hunting capabilities like no other land or sky critter I know, though there are some sea critters who are in their league underwater.
Bats hunt insects with nearly supernatural powers. They have good ears and can hear insects rustle or in the case of crickets, chirp. Their eyesight in low light conditions is amazing, and they can scan an area even while darting around the air at alarming speeds, then turn on a dime and snatch an insect for its meal.
Eyesight is not a bat’s best weapon, however. They have echolocating (almost like radar but sonic) capability, even at high speed, and I’ve read that what they can see at 20 feet they can echolocate at 40 feet. So, echolocation gives them a long view and identifies targets, then in close range their eyesight helps guide them in to make the kill.
It is a dangerous world for bugs because nearly everything except large predators want to eat them and even large predators make exceptions. Just at a time of evening when you think a poor bug can relax, out come some of the greatest night predators of all. It is a jungle out there!
— Capt. David Bacon operates WaveWalker Charters and is president of SOFTIN Inc., a nonprofit organization providing seafaring opportunities for those in need. Visit softininc.blogspot.com to learn more about the organization and how you can help. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
