54 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
dark corner of her porch for some time and were making a nuisance of 
themselves by soihng the floor. She wished me to do away with them. 
Upon examination I found four female pipistrelles hanging in the dark- 
est corner of the ceiling of the porch, which was partially shut in, in their 
characteristic tight cluster. Mrs. Austen informed me that they had 
been there the previous summer and that efforts to dislodge them by 
turning the hose on them, and poking them with brooms, were only 
temporarily successful, as they alw^ays returned the next night. This 
interested me and I wished to determine whether it was always the 
same bats that came back in spite of the disturbance or whether this 
porch was a roosting place known to many bats. Accordingly I 
ascended to their retreat and picked them off without their making 
any effort to fly. It was at this time I discovered that they were 
females carrying large embryos and I surmised that they had come 
here to have their young. I then took four of the smallest size bands 
of the American Bird Banding Association and placed them on their 
legs, taking c^ire not to close them completely, but pinching them on 
tightly enough so that they would not come off. I then carried the bats 
three blocks to my home where after observing them for a time, I 
released them. 
Mrs. Austen promised to inform me if the bats returned but as I 
never heard from her, the incident was forgotten until three years 
later, June 29, 1919, when she telephoned me that the bats had again 
been annoying her. She had invited a small boy to shoot them and 
when they picked up the dead bats they found the aluminum bands 
on their legs. I secured the bats of which there were again four, 
and three of them bore the bands that I had put on three years before. 
The numbers w^ere 15899, 15901, 15902. Number 15900 had either 
been lost from the leg or else the bat had disappeared and its place 
been taken by another. The fourth bat was a female and all again 
were carrying large embryos. I inquired of Mrs. Austen whether the 
bats had been roosting on the porch during the two preceding summers 
but as she had been away each summer she was unable to inform me. 
This curious incident of the same three, and probably the same four 
bats, staying together or returning to each other after three years had 
elapsed, reminded me of how little we know of their habits. Again, 
Mr. Howell, in his suggestive account of the California bats, states his 
belief that most of our bats are migratory, but the very fact that we 
cannot state so definitely shows how httle we know about them. He 
speaks, for instance, of the large brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus fuscus, 
