A mammal, but it does fly

[Stan Cunningham]

This was from last fall over a waterhole, may be some of you know it as elephant head pond in Amado, AZ or Bill's place. This species is endangered, but may be taken off this list with better management in the last 20 years. One of the few bat shots you will see with the mouth closed as this is a nectivorous bat, it does not echolocate as much as most and when they do they are nasal emitters, not screamers as most are. Sorry, more info than you probably wanted but I teach a mammalogy class so I got to sneak some in on the bird site.
This was taken with a phototrap, 3 flashes set at 1/64 to "stop action", F 16 and 1/125 but it really doesn't matter with the flashes and f stop set. 7D and 100-400 set at 150, I will go higher this year and try and get more of the animal.
Cloned out some junk in the pond, and cropped. Nothing else.
Comments appreciated.

[Ian Cassell]

Stan, seeing images like this makes me want to try a phototrap. This is really cool. I think you missed focus a little on the face, but I'm not sure how you could avoid that with an automatic setup like this. Keep going!

[Kerry Perkins]

Stan, this is excellent! I love the reflection, it really makes this one stand out to me. Very technical shot and you did a great job. You are absolutely correct about the shutter speed having no effect on the flash exposure here and I'm glad you mentioned it. Would have wished for more of the wings, but this is still an excellent natural history capture. Good work!

[John Chardine]

Love the mammal details Stan- bring them on! I imagine this is a very difficult image to make. It's a very tough image to crop and I see why you have tried to keep in the reflection. There is a lot of "negative" space in the image to the right and I don't think all of it is necessary.

Here I've just run Topaz Infocus on the image to deblur a little and also reduced the size of the catchlight in the eyes which as they were emphasised the slight softness. I also cropped but I'm not saying the crop is any better than yours!

[Martha Weaver]

I love seeing the unusual. How many of us ever get such a view of bats!
And as for more information than I need. Not at all! I love learning about all the critters and their habits and habitats. It's one reason I like this site.
Nice job. I do like John's re-sharpened version, too.