Past Events
FoHP Acoustic Survey of the Hoyt Park Bats
We had a great turnout for our annual Bat Survey. Thank you to Friends of Hoyt Park member Anne Reis who led the event. She shared some fun bat facts and her Echotouch microphone used to locate and identify bats foraging for insects around the open lawn area off the parking lot. It was thrilling to see the bats against the evening sky and then ‘hear’ the bat calls translated to a sound in the human hearing range. We identified several species of bats; the cave-dwelling Big Brown Bat that could use the 3 bat houses in the park to form maternity colonies of up to 100 bats, and 2 species of migrating bats, the Hoary and Silver-haired Bat.
For more about bats visit the DNR Wisconsin Bat Program.
It was so exciting to see all the birders join enthusiastic birding guide Megan Heneke on a beautiful morning in mid-May. Many people were new to the park and/or novice birders. All were treated to a morning of superb birding. Hoyt Park is a great place to bird with it’s prairies and grassy areas bordered by woodlands. There were 47 different species noted on a 2 hour guided walk. For those of you seasoned birders Megan’s ebird list for the walk is available here.
There were plenty of migrating warblers and it was a special treat to see a pair of scarlet tanagers. A big thank you to Megan for donating her time and birding knowledge to make this a very successful morning.