Bat Night in the Garden

This event is no longer on sale.

Sunday September 15

6:30 PM  –  8:30 PM

Join us as we enjoy the music of the night creatures in the garden under the big moon. Mostly we'll eavesdrop on the bats that hunt over the garden ponds while watching the sun set and the nearly full moon rise. We'll also listen for frogs and insects that sing at night.

The Bats in the Garden walks are led by Barbara Williams. Barbara has a life-long interest in natural history. She studied art education in college and managed the biological collections of the Burpee Museum in Rockford for more than ten years. She's a devoted bird-watcher and has been a fan of bats for 30 years and has studied the native pollinators of Northern Illinois for about eight years.

Our acoustic "bat detector" can lower the pitch of bat calls so we can hear them. The detector also produces a visible spectrogram of the calls so we can see the different patterns of each species' calls. We hope to see and hear four or five species of bats.

We'll meet in the lobby of the visitor center and have a short photo presentation to get acquainted with the bats of the Rockford area. Then we'll go out to sit on the pond deck to watch and listen for bats and anything else that's active.

The programs will run until about 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. These programs will be cancelled in the event of inclement weather. Overcast skies are fine for the bats, but rain or strong winds are a problem for human safety & comfort, plus the bats won't come out in rain & strong wind.

Loading...