Tanja was lucky last night. She and her husband were filming bats out in Arizona. At one moment she picked up her cheap camera and aimed it at the sky at just the right moment to catch this picture of a kestrel (Falco sparverius) catching a Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) - due to size, under the fold:
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Let's take a look at recent papers in PLoS ONE and other PLoS journals. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon…
By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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This is devious: Mexican free-tailed bats have jamming sonar to disrupt competitor bats' food hunting. It's like there aren't enough insects for everyone to eat!
Mexican free-tailed bats
Great picture. I have seen this happen several times up on campus, we have several thousand Mexican free-tails on campus (Arizona Western College/NAU Yuma) and some Kestrels that often catch them leaving their roosts, but have never thought I would be able to get a photo. Might have to try now.
Simply an awesome picture.