An earlier post documented a Whiskered Myotis Bat (Myotis muricola) roosting inside the rolled-up central leaf of my banana plant (Musa “Pisang Raja”).
Since then I have been keeping an eye of newly emerged leaves before the plant gets too tall for me to monitor its presence. Today, the rolled-up leaf was too high to peep inside, so it had to be gently pulled down. There was a dark mass deep down.
I used a selfie stick with my iPhone attached and blindly did a video of the centre of the rolled leaf (top). A number of random photo shots were also made. These confirmed the presence of something dark at the base (above).
Unfortunately, the rough handling of the delicate newly emerged leaf caused the lower leaf blade to split. This made the presence of the bat a little more obvious… and a photo opportunity (above). Slowly peeling off parts of the damaged lower leaf blade exposed the bat clinging on to the inner surface of the leaf (below).
Because of the disturbance, the bat suddenly flew off. This was followed by a smaller bat taking off before I could photograph it. There were two Myotis Bats roosting inside the rolled-up central leaf, an adult and a juvenile.
YC Wee
Singapore
10th September 2017