124 ANIMAL LIFE OF CARLSBAD CAVERN 



their entering caves. They may not regularly hiber- 

 nate. In summer they are tree bats, spending the 

 daylight hours hanging head down in the dense foliage 



of treetops. 



The hoary bat is the largest species known here, 

 with a spread of wings of about sixteen inches. The 

 ears are very short and wide, and the long soft gray fur 

 is grizzled with buffy or whitish tips. 



HOUSE BAT 



Myotis incautus (Fig. 42) 



These little pale brown bats are fairly common here. 

 At the Santa Fe water tower, four miles southwest of 

 Carlsbad, on the evening of July 29, 1901, I shot four 

 of them as they came to the water pool to drink at dusk, 

 flying in a straight line from the low limestone ridges to 

 the northwest, and moving so evenly as to be easily 

 shot on the wing. Usually in their zigzag flight after 

 insects bats are very difficult to shoot, and a dozen or 

 more shots would be necessary to procure four speci- 

 mens. I remarked at the time that the bats must have 

 come from a roosting cave, as they came in the same 

 line and were too thirsty to stop to catch insects. 

 Twenty-three years later, on May 2, 1924, Bob Dow 

 and Carl Livingston went with me to a cave in the top 

 of one of these limestone ridges about a half-mile north- 

 west of the same water tank, where hanging to the low 

 roof of the cave were about one thousand of these bats. 

 The weather was warm, the cave warm and dry, and 

 the bats were fully active, and easily alarmed by our 

 flashlights. They hung in a mass several yards in 



