Then there's the Tuttle trap which has fine wires or monofilament fish line strung on a tubular aluminum frame. You can see them and so could the bats, but because we blocked the trap off so it looked like a window, the bats thought they could fly through easily. They hit the filaments and slid down into this collecting bag. The trap was effective for catching bats but was useless for our mark-recapture project. We never caught a bat more than once. Apparently the frame imprinted on the bat's memory. After the first capture bats avoided the trap like poison. I found that out by running mist nets off like wings on both sides of the trap. I caught most bats in the nets farthest from the trap. We could also hoist the trap up into trees to catch canopy bats, just by throwing a line over a limb.

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