It is summer, and the bats are back. I took these photos at dusk, just a few minutes ago.
A cropped version of the above photo:
And this is with just a Galaxy Note 8 cell phone.
Bats are good, they eat bugs!
Bats are the leading cause of rabies deaths in people in the United States. Rabid bats have been found in all 49 continental states. Only Hawaii is rabies-free.
Any bat that is active during the day or is found in a place where bats are not usually seen ā like in your home or on your lawn ā might be rabid.
Seeing bats outside is common and normal, especially at dusk and through the night. Avoid intentional contact with bats outside. Use screens, tents, or mosquito netting when sleeping outside.
If you are outside and have direct contact with a bat, you should talk to a healthcare or public health professional to decide if you need to be vaccinated to prevent rabies. If youāre not sure if contact occurred but find a bat on or near you (for example, if you wake up with a bat near or on you), then you may need vaccination.
Source: Avoid risk of rabies from bats | CDC
Iāll take my chances with Malaria from mosquitos thank you.
Yeah. Girls donāt ever get it, but boys and dogs are ONE sentient being.
A dog passes away, and you know that this is the order of things, and you knew what you were signing up for from the start, but thereās a dog-sized hole in your psyche, and nothing will ever fill that hole, not even another dog. Life goes on, of course, and few people understand that a working dog is like an extra arm for the master, so the grief is far more profound than for a mere pet.
Its like, sureā¦ I know that the day is still sunny and bright, and life is good, and dogs simply have shorter lifespans, and thereās nothing anyone can do to fix that. But it is like the color orange suddenly disappeared from the entire universe, and will never be back again. A very basic thing is suddenly amiss, and NOTHING will ever make it right again. You move on, but decades later, I will walk towards the car, and reflexively mutter āhintenā (German for āget in the rear of the Volvoā), even though there has not been any dog at heel since the early 2000s.
And now, when I shoot skeeet/trap/sporting clays, I have to wander about, bend down, and pick up my own ejected shells. Every dog Iāve ever had was happy to either grab them on the fly, or pick them up from where they bounced, and lay them in a tidy pile.
I had everyone convinced that Gus the St Bernard knew tools. Iād be under a car, and a visitor would be talking to me, and Iād say āGus, hand me the 11/16ths box wrenchā. Gus would pick the tool up from the array laid beside the car, and drop it near my hand, extended from under the car. āThanks, Gusā Iād say. Every so often, Iād say something like āGus, this is the three-quarter inch, I asked for the 5/8ths. Hand me the 5/8ths, Gus.ā And Gus would then hand me the right tool.
The trick here is that Gus was only listening to āGus hand meā¦ā that meant pick up any of the bright shiny objects in front of you, and drop it by my hand. None of my friends knew one tool from another, and those that did would not look so closely. A great trick, and Gus was fabled for his intelligence. I had what I needed with me under the car, of course, I needed nothing from Gus.
Night time bats are GOOD. 
Iāll stick with team Mantisā¦
Thank you very much
Getting some egg sacs next year of these to try and handle these lantern fliesā¦
Word on the street is they like them.
My normally 18 foot sunflowers are budding early and at 8 feet this year thanks to the damage these lantern flies caused. Just imagine how much damage they can do to the nations food supply.
Sadly, nobody is taking it seriously. In my area, on Nextdoor, people are commenting on how we should leave these robotic creatures alone. Idiots! I canāt with the stupidity. Now lantern flies are a protected class.
I saw, maybe 5 adults last fall and no nymphs last spring / summer. There will be thousands of adults around here this year and millions of nymphs next year.
We have a few around here. I like them. But their reach is at best four inches from the ground.
For higher air cover, I like bats.
The good stuff.
Now all we are allowed to do is yell at bugs.
If you are over 70 and grew up in a smaller town, you probably can remember in the evening behind the foggerā¦
Morning and evening ā¦ and the city has a truck outfitted to drive around the town ā¦ all 3/4 mile by 3/4 mile of it ā¦ just donāt forget to close your windows when you hear him coming ā¦
NYC is still doing this for the Tiger Mosquitos we have here now. The fogger truck sounds like a giant 2 cycle leaf blower. You hear it coming along with the NYPD police car with the loud speaker telling everyone to get and stay indoors for an hour at 2AM.
I havenāt seen an ordinary mosquito in 5 years around here. Tons of tiger mosquitos and they bite 24/7. We canāt even use our back yard and we live nowhere near any water. These bastards can survive in just moist soil. If I weed my planting beds with shorts on, I come back in with 30 bites after 20 mins. The only good thing about Tiger Mosquito bites is they are gone in an hour or 2.
They came from the same place as the lantern flies. Itās also the same place that something else came from in 2020.
Or in dewdrops, as is true of most any member of the family, and not only survive, but thrive - IF the females can get a blood meal to kick-start their egg-laying process.
I reiterate:
Dragonflies are your friends.
Donāt have these but we do have bats believe it or not.
Likely you have none precisely because you have the other.
Could be but as mentioned earlier, there isnāt a body of water within a few miles of here. I think they need lakes nearby. Iām no dragonfly expert though.
From the Texas Hill Country to the Alabama end of the Appalachians to the South Carolina Piedmont to the shores of Floridaās Tampa Bay, we have both (as you noted upthread, bats are primarily nocturnal predators, while da dragons ply their trade primarily in the light of day).
I probably have the best mosquito swatter in entire panhandle of Texas. No swarm of mosquitoes has a chance against my little wife when she is sporting a fly swatter in both hands. Talk about determination !!! ā¦
{{{ canāt let her read this one or I know who will be getting swatted next }}}