Wisconsin Bat Festival at The Domes

Yesterday we attended the Wisconsin Bat Festival at the Mitchell Park Conservatory (The Domes) and had a great time.  They had live bats for display (many of them injured ones) as well as exhibits on everything from rabies to the White-Nose Syndrome, guano, and bat habitats.  They also had quite a few kids activities including art projects and a bat cave.  Besides major bat conservation organizations, also present were the WI DNR, US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

The highlight for us was the bat talk by Rob Mies.  He was so informative as well as entertaining and introduced us to three different species of bats including one native to Wisconsin.  Here are some photos and videos.

Brown Nose Bat - Largest bat native to Wisconsin

Here is a video of a straw colored fruit bat.

Here is the world's largest bat.

There was a booth outside where they were making bat houses out of defective car parts.  They used Corvette circuit boards for the dividers between chambers and a battery cover as the case for the house.  It was really cool.  Here are a couple of pictures.  

It is also always neat just to walk through each of the domes.  The plant life is so diverse and beautiful.  In the Show Dome they had an Ultra Violet show which was a sea of violet and gorgeous.

Zoo A La Carte

Zoo A La Carte at the Milwaukee County Zoo is always so much fun and this year was no exception.  We went for the music and people watching and enjoyed some food and drink as well.  They had five stages of music and I couldn't even guess how many food vendors spread out through the entire park.
We started our day listening to Ben Wagner at the Lakeview stage.  He was really enjoyable to listen to and made homemade cookies which he shared in celebration of his most recent single titled Homemade Cookies.

Then we headed to the Wine Tent right across from the giraffes and listened to Katie Troyer and Rick Anderson.  Unfortunately, they took a break shortly after we sat down but I still enjoyed a glass of wine and enjoyed people watching.  They served One Hope wines at the event which are pretty good (especially their Sparkling Brut) and the other benefit is that One Hope wines donate a portion of proceeds to charities.

There were a lot of people that attended but we were pleasantly surprised to find quite short food lines.  Here are some photos of the crowd.

Then we took a romantic train ride, something we hadn't done in years, which is unfortunate because our zoo membership comes with free tickets.  Regardless, we had a great time.

Some of the animals were quite active.

We ended the night with a concert by Everclear near the Caribou.  The sound quality wasn't all that great but the people watching was really enjoyable.  We brought chairs, staked out a good spot right by the wine tent, found a snack, and enjoyed the people.  We even ran into a colleague of my husband who picked a spot right in front of us.