By Dan Simon

One way biologists keep track bats is by banding them, affixing a little band to one of its legs so it can be identified later on if recaptured at a different location. This information can help determine the animal's range, it's summer and winter homes and forage area.

A more sophisticated method that's frequently used, is to attach a tracking device that enables researchers to know where the animal is at any given time. This is hardly news to most people, radio tracking of animals has been going on for quite a while, and isn't just relegated to bats either.

But sometimes animals don't make it easier on the researchers that are trying to learn more about their habits. The game commission hires bio-aides for many jobs, including doing the actual telemetry to see what the bats are up to. They tell the story of what happens when humans can't cover ground the way the bat flies.

"With radio telemetry it's best usually if you have three people so you can find the strongest signal to where the bat is," said Stacey Wilbert, a wildlife biologist aide. "We take a direction or an azimuth and all at the same time, someone's drawing on a map to pinpoint where the bat is. The person drawing can tell if someone's getting a bounce from rain or just in a bad location."

What that person can't tell you is how to get over the top of a mountain that doesn't have any roads, a common problem in this area.

"We had one bat, a little brown bat that we had previous experience with staying in the location close to the church," said her partner, Melissa Sneath. "One night however, it crossed a valley, then went over a mountain, Brush Mountain, and an additional valley.

"We had a thirty-minute drive either way to get around the mountain, to get to the bat to get a good signal on it. We lost the signal for anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes at a time because the mountain blocked our signal."