Happy Halloween!

 

A slit-nosed bat chatters in the eaves over our outdoor dining table in a Nile River bush camp in Uganda's Murchison Falls National Park. Bats are a beloved mascot for Halloween. With their leathery wings and high-pitched chirps, they can be a little scary. And in this case it might be a little warranted. I mentioned to my dinner companions that bats in Uganda are notorious carriers of ebola. Please pass the salt.

Happy Halloween!

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A small brown bat darts across the twilight sky at Cape May Point State Park. I love bats but I almost never get to photograph them.

Bats take shelter from the constant rain in the lea of an enormous tree trunk in Costa Rica's La Fortuna National Park. 

As so often happens when I'm on the trail, someone else kindly pointed out the bats tucked away in the shadows of this tree trunk in Costa Rica. The floor of the rainforest can be very dark.

I couldn't let the holiday pass without including the Halloween Crab, a favorite rainforest crab to see in Costa Rica.

A white-striped bat clings to a tree trunk in Carara National Park. I wish I had more time to explore this park, where I saw peccaries, howler monkeys, spider monkeys and toucans.

A slit-nosed bat's enormous ears help them catch flying insects on the wing.

Fruit bats drape themselves with their wings like Dracula's cape to stay warm in a rainstorm in Sydney, Australia, where it was about 45 degrees. These are fruit and flower specialists.

A spectacled fruit bat soars above me in the evening light at Yungaburra. I could watch them all day.

Spectacled bats huddle together to socialize before heading out on their nightly search for flower nectar. These adorable bats are in sharp decline in Australia.

A pretty gray-headed bat scratches an itch while napping in Parramatta Park in a suburb of Sydney.

A gray-headed flying fox returns from a sortie over a lake. Even the bats can get sick of hearing their neighbors squabble and find a quieter resting spot during the day. These large fruit bats are competent fliers. I really love seeing how graceful and agile they are in the air.

These gentle bats have a lot of supporters in Australia. They were so much fun to see. It's no wonder they feature in a lot of children's stories.