A pack of five women, we have safety in numbers. We meet at Grand Army Plaza and venture into Long Meadow, a huge area of the park that is filled with picnic blankets, dogs of all shapes and sizes, fitness classes, and people reading under the shade of trees during the day but becomes deserted as the sky grows dark.
Long Meadow is just within the perimeter of the park, not far from the road, so the area feels safe, and the best part is that at dusk it feels and looks like another world. We enter via a small path and are soon surrounded by trees. Beyond them, all we see is lamplit green. City parks and botanic gardens are my refuge and theirs.
The bats found in Brooklyn go mostly unnoticed, but on summer nights, they fly high above our heads to annihilate mosquitoes. New York City is home to tree bats like eastern red bats and hoary bats that migrate south each year and return mid-April.
Adorable cave bats, including little brown bats, big brown bats, and tricolored bats, manage to live in the city year-round.
In winter, they hibernate inside or under urban structures, in leaf piles or under the bark of trees. When the weather warms, they roost under bridges and in crevices in rocks, tree hollows, and branches. Bats can live long lives compared to other mammals their size. The oldest recorded bat found in New York was thirty-four years old. Because they are most active at night, bats depend on echolocation to navigate and locate prey.
