Sodalis Nature Preserve

Yesterday we went to a city park in Hannibal called Sodalis which is Latin for social.  50 years or so ago there were limestone mines and when they were abandoned, bats found a home.  Hundreds of thousand bats.  One bat, the Indiana bat, is endangered, and these caves are home to over 200,000 of them.  There are 5 other species of bats also living in this cave complex.

Paved trail, had some off-trails not improved

Poke Berries - do not eat these!

Look closely in middle of Golden Rod - see Praying Mantis?

Surprised at the amount of wild flowers

Remnant of lime kiln

The park opened in 2016 with a grant made possible to develop and maintain specially designed gates over the openings of 34 caves which allow bats to fly in and out and keep people out.  Was pretty awesome to see.  We found out there are different times of the year that the Wildlife and Conservation folks sponsor bat-watching/counting activities.

Peaked inside one cave - remnants of the limestone mining

We had a quick chat with a local couple who were walking the trail and they said you should see the volume of bats as they fly out at dusk.  No thank you.  As a kid I remember a big colony of bats living in a rotted tree in the back of our property and I remember those boogers flying around at night.   Was very impressed with the caves, we only saw about 20, can you imagine at dusk all the bats flying out of these caves?  The smell of bat guano was overwhelming when we walked up to some of the caves to peak in.  Pee-U!  Also - we noticed at times while walking along the path of a very heavy musk smell, we think we were walking past fox dens.

Poor butterfly - got one wing chewed off

Some caves were pretty well hidden

To show how large the openings are on some of the caves

One cave we could see through to the other side

The Bear Creek (used to be the Hannibal Creek) flowed beside preserve