The Contented Naturalist

As a naturalist, I spend a lot more time poking around in other creatures’ excrement (also known as scat) than most people. I love finding clues to the animal’s identity and diet, like the fish scales and bones in an otter’s scat, or how when the pawpaws are ripe, suddenly every pile of fox poop and racoon poop is chock-full of the large seeds. But every now and then I discover something extra cool. This fall, I found out that at least in my area, bat scat sparkles!

One of my partners decorates his house outrageously for Halloween. He and his wife and their two kids really go all out. I was visiting one evening after a social event, and they mentioned they had a bat box. Anyway, I asked if they might actually have bats in it? “We think so,” they said, “there’s droppings all underneath it. But we’d really like if you could look and confirm for us that it’s from bats.” Well! You don’t exactly have to bribe me to get me to go look at droppings.

So I went out back and shone my phone’s flashlight up at the box on the chimney. It was dark and shadowy, I couldn’t make out much up there. (Apologies for the grainy photos, my phone camera struggled with the low light.) But sure enough, I did see a lot of droppings just underneath the box’s entrance.

And when I looked at the trash bin at the base of the chimney, I noticed the small oval droppings that were scattered all over the cover. As I brought the light closer, I noticed something interesting- the droppings actually sparkled! When I moved the light, it reflected off different shiny pieces in the droppings. Was I looking at droppings from fashion-forward bats? Nope, these are just normal bat droppings, as it turns out. They naturally kind of glitter, because most of what they eat is insects, so their poop is full of the insects’ hard shiny exoskeletons. How cool is that? I ran a quick online search for glittery scat and apparently that’s a known thing. This post will now join dozens of other blogs and articles marveling at the sparkles in bat guano. Ha! (Go look yourself.. I’ll wait!)

I can’t say exactly what kind of bat might be roosting in their bat box. I know there are several types in my area- little brown bats, big brown bats, tricolored bats, red bats, and probably several more. Stay tuned for more tales of nature, in all its weird and sparkly glory.