Bat Night on Minnesota Point

Bat biologists are investigating a group of the nocturnal creatures that call Minnesota Point home. The general public is invited to join them for Bat Night on Minnesota Point.

This event is weather dependent; it will occur on one night in the range of Sept. 14-19, from 6 to 10 p.m. For the exact date of the event keep an eye on the Park Point Community Club and the Minnesota Scientific & Natural Areas‘ Facebook pages or email arika.mcgraw @ state.mn.us to be added to an email notification list. The date will be determined the week before the event.

The evening begins at Lake Superior Waterline Pump Station #1, or Walter F. Stock Pumping Station, near Sky Harbor Airport. Attendees should make sure to factor in the time needed to hike the 0.8 mile of trail from the parking area to the station. At 6 p.m. there is an introduction to the bats of Minnesota, what the Minnesota DNR and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service are working on with bats, and Indigenous storytelling about bats. Then the group will move on to the data gathering activities.

• Observe DNR mammologists as they gather bats that were caught in carefully placed nets to bring back to a processing tent near the pumping station. There they will record information such as species before releasing them.
• Join scientists as they go on walks up and down the beach using Echo Meters to record the sounds bats make to help navigate and find food. These devices are connected to a tablet and detect and record the bats in real time. Participants can see the color spectrographs of the bats’ echolocation and even get a potential species identification.

Both of these activities happen simultaneously and participants can filter back and forth between them.