Lesser Long-eared Bat
S1, profile
Lesser Long-eared Bat
S1, Wing
| Lesser Long-eared Bat S1, profile | | Lesser Long-eared Bat S1, Wing | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Chordates (Chordata) - Mammals (Mammalia) | |||
| Order: | Bats (Chiroptera) | ||||
| Family: | Vesper Bat (Vespertilionidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Lesser Long-eared Bat (Nyctophilus geoffroyi) | ||||
| This Photo: | 🔍S1, Post-nasal Ridge🔎 | ||||
Thank you Sam Gordon for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere The photo's are rotated to show details. Only the dorsal shot shows it's natural position. We heard a scratching at the front flyscreen door. Thought it was our resident goanna. But did seem a bit more "paper scrunching" like sound. Turned out to be something like fledgling birds. The two of them circled around abit, doing figure 8's until we realised they were bats. After looking for a bit (thinking they were Gould's Wattled Bat we've seen before) turned the light off to let them be in peace. Checked a few moments later and one landed on the opposite wall. The other was gone. 5 minutes later it was upside down, then 10 minutes later and this one was gone as well. We're thinking they were hunting insects at the flyscreen; attracted to the inside lights. We avoid leaving the carport light on these days. We've noticed a massive decline in invert numbers over recent years, so do everything we can not to interfere with their habitat. Marie made an interesting observation. She thinks that they came into shelter as we had a major storm that night and then they took advantage of the inverts at the door. This makes sense as we've had the night light on hundreds of times in the past searching for inverts without ever encountering a bat before (with lots more inverts at the lights). We had trouble differentiating between these and the vulnerable N. corbeni. N. geoffroyi has a 'Y' shape above it's nostrals, but we had trouble discerning that until Sam showed us some detailed photo's, then our photo's made sense. Sam said "I believe the best way to confidently separate these two species is the shape of the post-nasal ridge. From Menkhorst & Knight's A Field Guide to the Mammals of Australia (2013): N. geoffroyi: "Post-nasal ridge well developed, about 1.5mm high, split to give Y-shaped central groove" N. corbeni: "Post-nasal ridge low and broad with indistinct central vertical groove"" | |||||
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