Or you could call this blog, How to Garden for Wildlife in Zero Easy Steps.
 

A Hands-off Policy

In a poem that captivated my imagination when I was about 11 years old, Walt Whitman wrote, “I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained.” At that time I wanted to live with the animals too, preferably with a pack of wolves (I had yet to recover from reading Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories, about a boy raised by wolves in India, a few years before). Now, thanks in large part to the wildish nature of my backyard, an NWF Certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat®, I find that I more or less do live with the animals, or rather, they have turned to live with me.

When my wife and I first moved into our suburban house in northern Virginia, I decided to leave our backyard alone. Heavily wooded, it lay in deep shade and backed to a larger woodland. I neither water nor fertilize my yards anyway, and this backyard was too shadowed for grass. In fact, it was covered by a massive moss bed that would turn emerald green in spring, before the trees grew their leaves. I wanted to leave it alone so I could see what nature had in store for it. I didn’t want to mow it, feed it, water it, plant it or anything else. I wanted to see what seeds the wind would plant, and which plants the sun and the clouds would let grow.

The result was the animals.
 

I Didn’t Build It, But They Came Anyway

Soon after I put up a bird feeder, American crows started coming in groups, giving me a sense of connecting with wildlife. Usually

Red foxes play in my backyard–the photo was shot through a window screen, hence the softness.

But it was a family of pileated woodpeckers that made me feel that my approach to gardening was working out. One day a pair of these woodpeckers—big as crows, heads topped with large red crests, shy and with a marked preference for woodlands—showed up at my feeder with two fledged offspring. They clamored over the feeder, the adults hammering into the suet blocks, and the young ones sliding awkwardly on the wooden roof of the feeder, still mastering the art of fighting gravity. Their presence gave my backyard an important seal of approval. If pileated woodpeckers were coming in, something was okay back there. But my gardening partner was deeply experienced: Nature has been gardening for wildlife since forever.

Squirrels and Deer

The tree squirrels are the main attraction, or at least the most ubiquitous, as might be expected—eastern grays. They are constantly in sight, but a few individuals stand out. One of these was a kamikaze that broke though my bird-feeder defense mechanism, a wobbly plastic sleeve mounted on the pole holding the feeder, depriving squirrels of any hope of climbing up to the food. It worked for about five or six years before one especially reckless squirrel took an aerial approach. He climbed to the roof of the house and flung himself out at least a dozen feet, as well as about 10 feet down, to the feeder. But the approach wasn’t foolproof. Once he miscalculated and rocketed straight past the feeder, overshooting by about 8 feet or so and crashing to the ground. Ah well, perhaps flying squirrels got their start that way. I moved the feeder a few feet farther from the house, putting an end to his escapades.

White-tailed deer in my backyard. Pardon the softness–this photo was shot through a window screen.

Squirrels get devoured once in awhile. One morning a red-shouldered hawk captured a gray squirrel and landed on the rail fence surrounding the yard to tear at the rodent for a few minutes before flying off. There’s nothing like a little predatory action to make a wildlife habitat seem truly certified. On another occasion, a red fox that denned in the woods gave frantic chase to a dodging squirrel beneath a rhododendron shrub and emerged with the squirrel limp in its vulpine jaws. Once a fox carrying a dead squirrel jumped up on the top rail of the fence and sat down. A second red fox joined it, looking on expectantly, but the first one kept the squirrel for itself.

Falling Trees

Two years ago, a developer—may Aldo Leopold curse him—cut down about two-thirds of the woods that lay beyond my backyard to build what he optimistically called luxury homes. The woods directly behind my yard were spared, but the spot where the red fox had its den beneath a fallen tree was not. I feared I’d seen the last of the fox.

But one spring day, not long after the cutting of the woods, the red fox emerged from under my deck. Far from disappearing, it had moved in with me. And it was in the company of three pups, which played on the patio.

Meanwhile, the fattest woodchuck I’ve ever seen had been roaming my backyard the previous summer and had spent the winter under my deck, burrowed in beneath the safe harbor of the deck’s wooden floor. I wonder what the woodchuck and the foxes made of one another that spring. Apparently not a meal, as the woodchuck continued to trundle around the yard in its magnificent obesity the following autumn.

As if to underscore that the animals had turned and lived with the humans, one morning I glanced out a window to see a white-tailed deer, a large house cat—a white and tan feline that must way 15 pounds or more—and a red fox standing by the rail fence as if at three points of a triangle not 10 feet apart. They looked at one other for several minutes. What went through their minds? To their consciousnesses must be added a fourth, that of the clothed ape at the window. Together we had captured a moment of acknowledgement, one to another, there in my Certified Wildlife Habitat®, where all the gardening is done by wind, rain, and sun.

Sign Up for Certified Wildlife Habitat®

These wolves, hunting in Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Valley, were photographed by Diane Reed, a contestant in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest.

In both cases, the predators not only help control prey populations but also alter prey behavior through the “ecology of fear,” the term biologists are applying to the way predation affects how prey species use habitat.

Ecological Similarities

In a study published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, scientists from Oregon State University (OSU) and the University of Washington tread new ground. And water. “For too long we’ve looked at ecosystem functions on land and in the oceans as if they were completely separate,” says William Ripple, a professor in the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and an international expert on large predators. “We’re now finding that there are many more similarities between marine and terrestrial ecosystems than we’ve realized. We need to better understand these commonalities and, from them, learn how interactions on land may be a predictor of what we will see in the oceans, and vice versa.”

National Wildlife Photo Contest competitor Wade Walcher shot this image of a tiger shark cruising the surface of the sea.

You can symbolically adopt a shark or a wolf from our adoption center today! You’ll help NWF continue our work to save wildlife.

Similar effects take place between the Australian sharks and dugongs, the researchers found. When the sharks are abundant, dugongs graze less in shallow water, where seagrass grows thickest but dugongs are most vulnerable to sharks. This shift in feeding habitat—which causes the dugongs to give up food they might otherwise consume—allows seagrass meadows to thrive, along with a range of other plants and animals that depend on the vegetation.

The dugong is an increasingly rare species. This one was photographed by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Selmeczi Daniel

Apex Consumers

Tiger sharks and gray wolves are apex predators—animals that, at maturity, prey on other species but are rarely preyed on themselves. The ecological importance of apex consumers is becoming increasingly clear as the body of research on these animals grows, showing that loss of or declines in these species can ripple throughout ecosystems. For more information, see the current issue of National Wildlife magazine.

The photographs in this blog were donated to NWF by entrants in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. Do you have photos you would like to put into competition? Here’s how you can do it.

A gray squirrel caught by a National Wildlife photo contest entrant in a typical pose that suggests they may be masters of theft as well as deceit.

Hidden Resources

Research covered in National Wildlife magazine almost five years ago showed that gray squirrels try to deceive one another when hiding food for the winter. They engage in misdirection to keep other squirrels from stealing their loot. Using this behavior as a model, researchers led by Ronald Arkin, a regents professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, have developed robots that deceive each other.

Arkin and his team began by reviewing biological research showing that squirrels gather acorns and store them in specific locations. Each animal patrols its hidden caches, routinely checking on them. When another squirrel shows up, the hoarding squirrel changes its behavior. Instead of checking true locations, it visits empty cache sites, trying to deceive the interloper.

Arkin and his Ph.D. student Jaeeun Shim implemented the same strategy in a robotic model, and the behaviors worked: The deceiving robot lured the “predator” robot to false locations, delaying the discovery of protected resources.

The research is funded by the Office of Naval Research, which suggests that the military may find ways to employ squirrel deception behavior. “This application could be used by robots guarding ammunition or supplies on the battlefield,” Arkin says. “If an enemy were present, the robot could change its patrolling strategies to deceive humans or another intelligent machine, buying time until reinforcements are able to arrive.”

Succor for Squirrels

Despite their military potential, let us not forget that squirrels are hungry little creatures struggling to survive in native habitat where we have built houses and places of business. While some of us may grapple with ways to keep squirrels out of our bird feeders, on Squirrel Appreciation Day perhaps we can relent and offer the bushy-tailed rodents a snack of truce. For those so inclined, here is a recipe that I, uh, borrowed from the website squidoo.com, which has not adopted the gray squirrel’s deceptive techniques for hiding goodies and which offers a lot of information on National Squirrel Appreciation Day.

Homemade Squirrel Cakes

What’s good for the birds is good for the . . .

These tasty cakes for squirrels are less expensive than purchasing ready made squirrel food.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound suet
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup oatmeal (uncooked)
• 3 cups birdseed
• old pan
• wooden spoon
• muffin tins
• plastic knife or old knife

Instructions

1. Melt the suet in an old pan until it becomes mushy and almost turns to liquid. It does not matter if it is a little lumpy.
2. Stir in the peanut butter and oatmeal using the wooden spoon over medium heat until the peanut butter becomes runny.
3. Add the birdseed 1 cup at a time until the mixture becoms difficult to stir. Do not let the mixture cool as you add the birdseed, because it will be too difficult to get it out of your pan.
4. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tins filling to the top.
5. Let the mixture sit for about 24 hours. Use the plastic or old knife to pry the cakes out of the tins.
6. Place the little cakes around your yard and watch the squirrels go absolutely nutty over them.

Help Squirrels and Other Wildlife

Help squirrels and other wild animals year round in your backyard or elsewhere by planting trees and by gardening for wildlife.

Plant a flower, and you may grow hummingbirds like this one, feeding on a bee balm in the yard of an entrant in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest.

       “Nothing is truly small, as anyone knows who has peered into the secrets of Nature. . . . Everything works upon everything else. . . .
       “The science of mathematics applies to the clouds; the radiance of starlight nourishes the rose; no thinker will dare to say that the scent of hawthorn is valueless to the constellations. Who can predict the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who can measure the action and counter-action between the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the play of causes in the depths of being, the cataclysms of creation?  The cheese-mite has its worth; the smallest is large, and the largest is small; everything balances within the laws of necessity. . . . 
       “Between living things and objects there is a miraculous relationship; within that inexhaustible compass, from the sun to the grub, there is no room for disdain; each thing needs every other thing. . . . Every bird that flies carries a shred of the infinite in its claws. The process of birth is the shedding of a meteorite or the peck of a hatching swallow on the shell of its egg; it is the coming of an earthworm or a Socrates, both equally important to the scheme of things. Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision? You may choose.
       “A patch of mould is a galaxy of blossoms; a nebula is an ant heap of stars. . . . In the vast cosmic changes, universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, borne by the mysterious flow of invisible currents, making use of everything, wasting not a single sleeper’s dream, sowing an animalcule here and shattering a star there . . . . governing, if only by the universality of the law, the evolution of a comet in the heavens by the encircling of infusoria in a drop of water.”                                

                                 [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (New York City: Penguin Books, 1982) pp. 764-65.]

You’re Connected Too

To highlight your own connections with nature, you might want to combine gardening and conservation, or turn your outdoor property into an NWF Certified Wildlife Habitat®.

The white berries of mistletoe plants are poisonous to humans but valuable food to many other species.

Here are some mistletoe facts that may give you new respect for a plant that, until now, you might have considered as just an excuse to limber up your lips:

• There are 1,300 mistletoe species worldwide. The continental United States and Canada are home to more than 30 species, and Hawaii harbors another six.
• Globally, more than 20 mistletoe species are endangered.
• All mistletoes grow as parasites on the branches of trees and shrubs. The genus name of North America’s oak mistletoe—by far the most common species in the eastern United States—is Phoradendron, Greek for “tree thief.”
• Ancient Anglo-Saxons noticed that mistletoe often grows where birds leave droppings, which is how mistletoe got its name: In Anglo-Saxon, “mistel” means “dung” and “tan” means “twig,” hence, “dung-on-a-twig.”
• Mistletoes produce white berries, each containing one sticky seed that can attach to birds and mammals for a ride to new growing sites. The ripe white berries of dwarf mistletoe, native to the western United States and Canada, also can explode, ejecting seeds at an initial average speed of 60 miles per hour and scattering them as far as 50 feet.
• When a mistletoe seed lands on a suitable host, it sends out roots that penetrate the tree and draw on its nutrients and water. Mistletoes also can produce energy through photosynthesis in their green leaves.
• As they mature, mistletoes grow into thick, often rounded masses of branches and stems until they look like baskets, sometimes called “witches’ brooms,“ which can reach 5-feet wide and weigh 50 pounds.
• Trees infested with mistletoe die early because of the parasitic growth, producing dead trees useful to nesting birds and mammals. A mistletoe-infested forest may produce three times more cavity-nesting birds than a forest lacking mistletoe.
• A variety of birds nest directly in witches’ brooms, including house wrens, chickadees, mourning doves and pygmy nuthatches. Researchers found that 43 percent of spotted owl nests in one forest were associated with witches’ brooms and that 64 percent of all Cooper’s hawk nests in northeastern Oregon were in mistletoe. Several tree squirrel species also nest in witches’ brooms.

Mistletoe grows in tangled balls of stems that can be up to five feet across. They’re sometimes called witches’ brooms.

• Three kinds of U.S. butterflies depend on mistletoe for survival: the great purple hairstreak, the thicket hairstreak and the Johnson’s hairstreak. These butterflies lay eggs on mistletoe, and their young eat the leaves. The adults of all three species feed on mistletoe nectar, as do some species of native bees.
• The mistletoe’s white berries are toxic to humans but are favored during autumn and winter—when other foods are scarce—by mammals ranging from deer and elk to squirrels, chipmunks and porcupines. Many bird species, such as robins, chickadees, bluebirds and mourning doves, also eat the berries.
• The kissing custom may date to at least the 1500s in Europe. It was practiced in the early United States: Washington Irving referred to it in “Christmas Eve,” from his 1820 collection of essays and stories, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. In Irving’s day, each time a couple kissed under a mistletoe sprig, they removed one of the white berries. When the berries were all gone, so was the sprig’s kissin’ power.

Happy Holidays!

Moreover

Shop with the NWF Online Catalog, and read more about mistletoe from a source that provided information for this blog.

A bison cow attends to her newborn calf in Yellowstone National Park. Working with the Sioux and Assiniboine tribes, NWF recently helped with the release of selected Yellowstone bison on the Fort Peck Reservation, creating a new herd of genetically pure buffalo.

Saying “Thanks”

For the second consecutive year, as Thanksgiving Day draws near, NWF has given staff the opportunity to thank individual donors individually as we phone hundreds of contributors of all kinds and sizes. We reach only a small proportion of those who support NWF, but we try to call as many as time and other constraints allow, just to say thank you.

As a senior editor of National Wildlife magazine, I phoned two dozen donors myself, with great pleasure. I have worked in conservation at the national level for more than 30 years, and throughout that time the importance of donors to my career and to protecting wildlife has been ever on my mind. During my calls, I found myself talking mostly to answering machines, but that didn’t diminish the pleasure of saying thank you to these folks whose kindness plays such an important role in wildlife conservation. My favorite answering machine message this year was by Betsy in Philadelphia, who said she couldn’t answer the phone because she was at the zoo.

Tim Brady, NWF philanthropy officer, makes calls to thank donors during the annual NWF Thanksgiving thank-you event.

Elizabeth Tamburello, an NWF marketing coordinator, said she too found that people she talked to also thanked NWF. One donor, along with giving Tamburello a back-at-you thanks, told her, “I literally just put my check in the mail to you guys.” Several donors Tamburello talked to said they hoped NWF would continue to fight against climate change (we will), saying “it was a big concern of theirs.”

An angler fishes along the Gulf of Mexico coast as pelicans wing overheard. NWF’s many efforts for gulf protection following the BP oil spill recently helped win $1.2 billion for restoration from the BP criminal settlement.

Donor Dollars in Action

In addition to its actions against global warming—seeking better regulation of greenhouse gases and helping individuals take their own measures to reduce carbon footprints—NWF is engaged in a wide range of conservation activities, thanks to donor dollars:

• NWF is working to protect habitat and environmental conditions in the Great Lakes region. Most recently, NWF has worked for laws designed to keep Asian carp—an invasive species that could cause devastating ecological damage—from expanding into the Great Lakes and has sought to close gaps, inconsistencies and loopholes in U.S. state and Canadian provincial laws that leave the Great Lakes vulnerable to a new wave of mining activity;
• NWF is working for stronger protections against mercury pollution, helping to get the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in late 2011 to finalize the first-ever national limits on mercury from U.S. coal-fired power plants, which will cut emissions by 90 percent and significantly reduce exposure that can harm wildlife and impair brain development in children.
• After 15 years of partnership with the Intertribal Bison Cooperative, NWF last March helped secure 61 genetically pure Yellowstone National Park bison for release on the Fort Peck Reservation, the northeastern Montana home of Sioux and Assiniboine tribes. Since the release on March 19, more than 20 bison calves have been born, a start to restoring a lost part of the tribes’ heritage.
• NWF and its partners in 2009 won a series of court cases requiring the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to ensure protections of wildlife and habitat in three local flood zones proposed for development, benefitting endangered Key deer in Florida, dwindling orcas and Chinook salmon in Washington state’s Puget Sound and more than 314 square miles of Mississippi wetland and bottomland forest between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers, which would have been drained by the proposed Yazoo Pump.
• Thanks to dedicated work by dozens of NWF employees on the Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign, half of the $2.4 billion that BP will pay to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as part of its criminal settlement for the Gulf oil spill will be used for Mississippi River delta and barrier-island restoration in coastal Louisiana.
  Late in 2010, NWF and the Florida Wildlife Federation (FWF) successfully concluded a federal case challenging FEMA’s practice of issuing flood insurance for storm-surge areas along the Florida coast, which includes 90 percent of U.S. sea turtle nesting habitat.
• Through its Certified Wildlife Habitat® program, NWF has guided more than 100,000 citizens through the process of turning their backyards and other property into habitat suitable for local wildlife.

A New Generation of Conservationists

A group of friends camp out in Virginia. NWF is seeking to get 10 million more childern into the outdoors during the next three years.

• The annual Great American Backyard Campout, now approaching its ninth year, which gets families out of the house and into tents in backyards and other outdoor sites. More than 160,000 campers participated in 2011.
• Eco-Schools, an internationally acclaimed program started in 1994 by the Foundation for Environmental Education, which provides a framework to help educators integrate sustainable principles throughout their schools and fosters environmental stewardship among youth. NWF has served since 2008 as Eco-School host for U.S. K-12 schools. The program now has more than 700 participating schools with 300,000 students.
• The Certified Schoolyard Habitats, a program that helps teachers and students to develop wildlife havens on school grounds and that also creates outdoor classrooms. With more than 4,000 certified schools, including more than a dozen tribal schools, Schoolyard Habitats is the largest U.S. school-garden program.

Thanks Again!

Nothing NWF has or will accomplish could be done without donors. For those we couldn’t phone this year, everyone at NWF extends to you too a hearty “Thank you” for your support.

Click below for more information on:

Adopt a Species

NWF Gifts for Kids

NWF Gifts for All

Photographs for this blog were donated by entrants of the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest, to whom goes a special thanks.

A male house finch in Molt, Montana, photographed by National Wildlife Photo Contest competitor Jeanette Tasey. House finches are found across the continental United States and were among the four most common species observed in the Phoenix study.

“We already know that bird communities differ, and there are more desert birds found in the desert-type yard,” Lerman says. “With this study, we’re starting to look at how different yards function, whether birds behave differently by yard type.”

Lerman and her colleagues conducted the experiment in 20 residential yards in Phoenix—which lies at the northern edge of the Sonoran Desert—using seed trays to determine the extent to which visiting birds depend on artificial versus natural food sources. In all, 14 species visited the trays, 11 of which visited both yard types.

Birds Go Natural

The researchers found that foraging birds fed at seed trays in moist yards more than did birds foraging in dry yards. Foragers in the desert-like yards quit the seed trays earlier because of a greater abundance of alternative food resources in those yards, spending more time foraging in the natural yard and less at the seed tray.

The study could be used as a model for other habitats, as birds and other species in any ecological area are more likely to be attracted to and benefit from yards that match natural habitat, as opposed to yards composed mostly or entirely of nonnative plant species. The results of this study add to increasing evidence that native landscaping can help to mitigate the impacts of urbanization on common songbirds, Lerman says.

How You Can Help

You can help birds and other wild animals enjoy a more natural environment in your yard (and at your church, school and other community centers) by signing up with NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat® program. 

You can also share photos of your habitat work and learn how to garden for wildlife. 

More Information

Other research on backyard habitat. 

Teen creates community wildlife habitat.

History of the Certified Wildlife Habitat program.

Further background on Certified Wildlife Habitat.

Bats Are Mammals

Bats grow hair and feed infant young with mother’s milk, two defining characteristics of mammals. Biologists put bats in the scientific order Chiroptera (from Greek meaning “hand wing”), in the same way that carnivores like bears, wolves, lions and tigers are put in the order Carnivora.

Bats Are Biologically Old Creatures

In the fossil record, bats date back at least 52 million years—tens of millions of years before apes and humans appear.

Bats Are the Only Flying Mammals

Other mammal species glide, but only bats are capable of powered flight. Their wings are composed of the elongated fingers of the forelimbs with a thin webbing of furred skin stretching between the fingers. Because these wings are thinner than those of feathery birds, bats are capable of more rapid and precise turns than are birds.

The long ears on this big-eared, or long-eared, bat help the animal to listen to its sonar signals bouncing off its surroundings. Bats can modify the shape of the ears and reduce the amount of sound going into them to keep loud sonar signals–which humans can’t even hear–from deafening them. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Bats Are Very Successful

In biology, a successful order is one that produces a lot of species, showing that it is highly adaptable to many environments. The chiropterans have produced nearly 1,250 living species, meaning that about 20 percent of the world’s roughly 5,700 living mammal species are bats. (Of the various orders of mammal, only one beats bats in species numbers, and that is the order Rodentia—rodents—at roughly 2,277 species, including mice, rats, chipmunks, hamsters and beavers).

Bats Are Slow Breeders

Females usually produce only one offspring at a time, probably because pregnant bats must fly to find food and can handle only so much onboard cargo. Mothers feed newborns with milk and bring food to older young, which cannot fend for themselves until they are able to fly—a development that may take six weeks to four months, depending on the species. Animals that breed slowly usually live a relatively long time, allowing them to produce sufficient young to maintain the species, and bats are no exception. Individuals of some bat species can live 20 years.

Bats Are Insect Eaters

True, many bats hunt on the wing for insect prey, eating thousands of small insects each night. Many of the small bats native to the United States follow this diet. But some bat species eat fruit, some small animals such as frogs, and some even eat fish.

Bats Are Echolocators

Bats that hunt flying insects may use a form of sonar or echolocation—while flying, they emit sounds that bounce off nearby objects. The echo helps the bat locate what lies ahead, including such prey as moths and mosquitoes. Some bats eat insects on the ground, but they also use highly developed hearing to locate their prey.

Bats Are Not Creatures that Get Tangled in People’s Hair

Certainly not. Their use of echolocation is so precise that

they can fly in complete darkness through a room crisscrossed with stretched lengths of string, compared to which a human is like the broad side of a barn.

Bats Are Little Animals

Yes, in many cases they are. In fact, one of the smallest mammals in the world is the bumblebee bat (also called Kitti’s hog-nosed bat), with a body less than an inch and a half long and weighing around 0.07 ounces. Found in Thailand and Burma, it feeds on insects.

Bats Are Large Animals

Pretty large, sometimes. Fruit bats, a.k.a. flying foxes, of Australia and parts of Asia and Africa can reach a wingspan of nearly 5 feet and weigh 2.5 pounds. Relying on a keen sense of smell and good eyesight to find the fruit on which they feed, they may fly 40 miles in search of a fruiting tree.

Outdoor Fun for You and Your Kids at Hike & Seek

In September and October, join NWF’s Hike & Seek™ in select cities nationwide for a 1- to 2-mile nature hike and scavenger hunt, during which you can learn more about bats at the Mammals Station on the trail, see a barn owl or other raptor up close, make a bug box and find many more activities for children of all ages, especially toddlers to age 10.

Batty Activities for a Pre-hike Kickoff

• Join thousands of other Americans who are turning backyards into Certified Wildlife Habitat ™

• Most bats are nocturnal. What should you do if you see one in the daytime?

• A Kid Quiz on bats

• Building a bat house.

With The Dark Knight Rises premiering this week, we wanted to revisit our assertions and add even more amazing reasons why Bruce Wayne should take a backseat to the bats of the world.

One in Five Mammal Species is a Bat

About one in every five species of mammal is a bat, which is to say, there are nearly 1,250 bat species out of about 5,700 mammal species (these numbers vary from source-to-source and time-to-time both because of the vagaries of classification and the discovery of new species).

The ability of bats to produce so many species is a sign that they can adapt to a wide variety of habitats and means they are among the most biologically successful, if not the most biologically successful, group of mammals.

Bats are Better Fliers than Birds

The lesser long-nosed bat (below) is a great example of why wings have made bats the successes they are today, after more than 52 million years of evolution.

An Arizona lesser long-nosed bat caught feeding on pollen by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Greg Tucker.

The wings are composed of the elongated fingers of the bat’s forelimb with a thin webbing of furred skin stretching between the fingers to create the flying surface. Because these wings are thinner than those of feathery birds, bats are better fliers than birds, capable of more rapid and precise turns. Nerve receptors in the wings help bats sense changes in air flow and even to use their wings as nets to catch insect prey.

Wings have allowed them to be highly adaptable and to turn up in some unexpected places…

Photograph of Costa Rican bats by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Timothy Potter.

Some Bats Sleep in Groups, Which May Number in the Millions

Bats flutter and settle in a Panama cave, photographed by Michael Drake, an entrant in the National Wildlife Photo Contest.

Bats Have Advanced Foraging Skills, Using Sonar and Sound

Bats tend to be specialized in their foraging habits. Those that hunt flying insects may use a form of sonar or echolocation—while flying, they emit sounds that bounce off nearby objects. The echo helps the bat locate what lies ahead, including such prey as moths and mosquitoes. Some bats eat insects on the ground, but they also use highly developed hearing to locate their prey.

The unusual-looking bat below has an appetite for an altogether different type of food:

Photo by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Bejat A. McCracken.

Some Bats Eat Fruit

Not all bats eat other animals, including the largest of the bats:

Erik Seidel, National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant, captured this image of fruit bats in Cairns, Queensland, Australia.

Bats Usually Have Only One Baby at a Time

Bats may range widely in size and food preferences, but there is one thing almost all have in common…

A flying fox mother and her offspring roost in a hut in South Africa. Image by National Wildlife Photo Contest entrant Pauline Kamath.

Mothers feed newborns with milk and bring food to older young, which cannot fend for themselves until they are able to fly.

Producing only one young at a time means that bats breed relatively slowly. Individuals of some species can live 20 years, however, giving them time to produce sufficient offspring for species survival. But such a slow birth rate can make bats vulnerable to die offs, such as one occurring now in the United States.

More Than a Million Bats Have Died From White-Nose Syndrome in North America

A little brown bat shows the characteristic white nose of a bat infected with the deadly fungus Geomyces destructans. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A close-up of an Indiana bat pictures a creature that is increasingly rare from loss of cave hibernating sites and white-nose syndrome. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The little brown bat (an infected specimen, above) has shown some adaptability that may help it survive: a socially roosting species that is one of the most common bats in the Northeast, it seems to be shifting into solitary roosting in parts of its range, according to new research from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“Our analysis suggests that the little brown bats are probably not going to go extinct, because they are changing their social behavior in a way that will result in them persisting at smaller populations,” says A. Marm Kilpatrick, one of the researchers.

The social-roosting Indiana bat (right) may not be so lucky—the Santa Cruz researchers believe it will decline toward extinction.

Bats have survived for at least 52 million years, outliving woolly mammoths and saber-tooth cats, but now face threats such as human encroachment on the caves they use for sleeping and nesting, loss of watering sites in arid parts of the nation, as well as white-nose syndrome.

State and federal agencies are attempting to limit human activity in bat caves, which also may help reduce the spread of diseases from cave to cave.

Batman, as the new film undoubtedly will show, always triumphs over his enemies. For real bats—such as the long-eared bat (below), which is becoming locally extinct in some areas because of white-nose syndrome—the outcome is a lot more iffy.

The long ears on this big-eared, or long-eared, bat indicate a species that hunts by echolocation. During hibernation the animal may roll up its ears. Some 19 species of big-eared bat occur in the Old and New Worlds. Local populations in parts of the United States are disappearing because of white-nose syndrome. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Bonus Fact: What is the World’s Smallest Bat?

The world’s smallest bat is the bumblebee bat (also called Kitti’s hog-nosed bat), with a body less than an inch and a half long and weighing around 0.07 ounces. It feeds on insects.

Extra Credit Reading

• Most bats are nocturnal. What should you do if you see one in the daytime?
• Kids: Learn more about fruit bats, the world’s biggest bat species.
• A Kid Quiz on bats
• Creating Backyard Habitat: building a bat house.
• Sign up to make your backyard a Certified Wildlife Habitat

This entry from the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest, submitted by Lakshmi Vadlamani, shows a dancing lady spider in Namibia. When this spider wants to flee danger, it can flip on its side and cartwheel at a speed of 44 turns a second. Though only 0.8 inches long, it can dig burrows up to 19.6 inches deep, moving 80,000 times its weight in sand. Can Spiderman do better?

With that background, we get to today’s question: How do Spiderman’s abilities stack up against those of a real spider?

Read on.

 Strength and Agility

Spiderman is famed for his web-suspended swings from building to building over city streets. You can find examples of equally amazing leaps and bounds among real arachnids if you take a look at jumping spiders. In a single leap a jumping spider can cover as much as 50 times its own length. It does so by using a powerful internal muscle that blasts fluids from the body into the legs, flinging the spider through the air. If the current holder of the world record for the long jump, Norwegian Arne Tvervaag, could make a comparable leap, he’d cover about 300 feet from a standing start; instead his record, set in 1968, is 12 feet 2 inches.

Walking Up Walls

Thanks to a stick-to-almost-anything skin, Spiderman can walk up walls. So can most spiders (if you’re a tarantula, do not try this at home—you’re too big and meant for burrowing). Each leg of a spider capable of climbing walls ends in a brushy covering of hair, and the end of each hair is in turn covered with microscopic organs that can take hold of small bumps in most surfaces, allowing the spider to go up walls and even across ceilings. This ability may be defeated (no pun intended; okay, it was intended) by very smooth surfaces, such as that of a bathroom sink.

Spider Sense

Spiderman is able to sense danger lurking near, the warning signal coming as a pain in his head that varies with the intensity of the threat. Spiders can detect danger coming their way with an early-warning system called eyes. You probably expected that. But that’s not all: their most important source of information about the world and its hazards comes from highly sensitive hairs that cover the bodies of most spiders. These hairs perceive even low-level vibrations coming through whatever surface a spider is standing on. Many species also bear hairs that sense vibrations in the air, including sound.

Webs

Spiderman can fire strands of web from his wrists.  Early in his career, he invented devices for doing this, but in later incarnations he developed biological adaptations that allowed him to make webs naturally. He can capture villains with the sticky stuff and use it like ropes for swinging from building to building. Real spiders produce several types of webs—some that are not sticky but serve as a superstructure for webs, some that are sticky and capture prey, some used for wrapping up prey in neat little packages (which, in some species, are given as gifts by males to females while courting; whether Spiderman has super gift-giving powers remains unrecorded). Some smaller spiders producer gossamer web, used as a sort of sail that catches the wind and can carry a spider far and wide, which probably explains in part why spiders are found almost everywhere in the world.

Spider silk comes from glands on the arachnid’s posterior, with different silks produced by different types of glands. Some silks are comparable in strength to high-grade alloy steel and can stretch up to four times their relaxed length without breaking. Made basically of protein and water, the silk is extremely lightweight once it dries. A single strand long enough to encircle the globe would weigh about 1 pound 2 ounces.

We’re Not Done Yet

Do you think spiders aren’t beautiful?  Check a spectacular photo of a jumping spider and another of a famously venomous species.

Spiders and Kid Stuff

A spidery activity for children and a way to make candy spiders.

Help Wildlife in Your Home and Theirs

Spiders abound in nature and fit into the larger scheme of most ecosystems.  Find out how you can help wildlife in your neighborhood.

National Wildlife Photo Contest

If taking wildlife photos is an enthusiasm of yours, whether in the far reaches of distant wilderness or in your own backyard, then submit your favorite images to National Wildlife’s 42nd Annual Photo Contest. The deadline is July 16, so there’s still plenty of time to enter. This year’s competition features some great prizes, including a $5,000 grand prize, and you can submit photos in seven categories, including one devoted just to backyard wildlife and natural gardening.