Sat outside with herself in the chilly gloaming yesterday and today. No evening chorus thanks to a gang of noisy rooks, further away today than yesterday. The odd owl.
But sweet little bats appeared - more yesterday than today but there were at least two today - circling the house and nearby trees. They come quite close, perhaps hoping to exploit midges attracted by our body heat. There's another, bigger sort that circle open spaces rather than staying low and close. Saw a couple of those yesterday but not today.
I like bats a lot. They used to squeak to me. Then they took to clicking in an offhand manner. Now they don't say a thing. But they still flutter by, endearingly close.
Don't remind me that one's senses decline with age. The bats have already told me so.
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Part of the planning consent for our street was that a a small shed was erected in next door's garden for bats to hang out. It has been successful - much the same as AC they are regular visitors in recent nights....
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If you saw them at dusk or thereabouts, good chance they were pipistrelles. (Most common type and first out at dusk).
You can get converters to make their squeaks audible, I built something like this for my mother.
www.nhbs.com/title.php?bkfno=192519&ad_id=813
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The first time I ever saw bats was when a crowd of us hippies were staying in these caves goo.gl/maps/QLO9a smoking resin and then drinking cyder in the nearby Lord Nelson until closing time.
I was aware of some fairly rapid flying things but I put it down to the cyder and resin, but then I saw them every night we were there and someone pointed out that they were in fact bats.
I think I see them here at dusk, but then again they could easily be swallows I suppose.
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Bats are all right until they get into your roof space.
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You're posh to have a belfry.
;>)
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Loads of bats round here: pity I can no longer hear their squeaks after I was about 16... Fun to watch in our yard circling up and down to catch insects.
After a lousy wet and cold spring/summer we have an explosion of insects and butterflies (mainly peacocks) . About 30-40 on our buddeia.
There was a bat in our eaves when we bought the house but it has long gone: lots of elderly trees with holes in nearby. And an old church (c1200AD)
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I've always loved them We often get them living upstairs in the attic, and sometimes one makes a foray down into the house. It's fascinating watching the way they negotiate obstacles without knocking into them, unlike a bird trapped inside which just flaps around clumsily. Open the window, turn the light out, and shut the door, and it will fly out.
The children used to get into a panic, but they are harmless (the bats, that is), and quite clean apparently, unlike mice, and don't I think chew wiring.
I went on a night time outing once with a bat expert armed with a listening device. It was fascinating identifying the different sounds. pipestrelles of course are the common small variety, but I remember Daubenton's, which swoop low over water.
Also I once found a long-eared bat hanging from a rafter in the attic.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Fri 7 Sep 12 at 09:58
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Someone here told me last night that he has seen a number of dead pipistrelles recently. He thinks there's a virus or bacterial infection that's killing them.
A few month ago my granddaughter's cat swiped an incautious long-eared bat out of the air on the Surrey/Sussex border. So it's an eco-criminal.
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The new Squatters law doesn`t apply to Bats! - if you`ve got `em you`ve to keep them! and any attemp to disturb or dislodge them or their roost is an offence. Many building/demolishing projects have had to be scrapped after "Compulsory" Bat-surveys before hand have discovered residents!
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There's often a few bats buzzing around the caravan at dusk.
Sitting on the raised deck, I'm almost at bat level, although they fly too quickly to get much of a view.
I reckon they must live in one of the trees near the caravan, because there are no suitable buildings nearby.
Some bats must live in trees because there has been bats for a lot longer than we've been putting up buildings with pitched roofs and wooden eaves to hang from.
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Bats do mostly roost in trees - lots of batty info. here
www.bats.org.uk/pages/bat_roosts.html
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I like bats now but as a heartless eight-year-old used to catch them in a butterfly net with the Methodist minister's son (aged 10 or 11) on the back verandah of the minister's house in Trincomalee. The bats lived in the rafters in the disused bathroom at one end of the verandah. We would go in there and scare them out, and they would then fly up and down the verandah trying to stay out of the sunshine outside it. Even so they weren't that easy to catch.
I doubt if being caught in a butterfly net did them much good. One of them bit the minister's son on the finger but he didn't get rabies.
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>> and quite clean apparently, unlike mice, ............
In a loft they produce bigger piles of poo than mice.
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Guano
tinyurl.com/7vn9oa
"Bat guano is usually mined in caves and this mining is associated with a corresponding loss of troglobytic biota and diminishing of biodiversity. Guano deposits support a great variety of cave-adapted invertebrate species, which rely on bat feces as their sole nutrient input. In addition to the biological component, deep guano deposits contain local paleoclimatic records in strata that have built up over thousands of years, which are unrecoverable once disturbed."
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>> deep guano deposits contain local paleoclimatic records in strata that have built up over thousands of years, which are unrecoverable once disturbed."
A hell of a lot of unrecoverable paleoclimatic records have been scooped up with huge power shovels, loaded into bulk carriers and spread on productive agricultural land the world over to improve yields (or simply make bad soil better).
Guano and phosphate rock... mmmm... profit....
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>> Guano and phosphate rock... mmmm... profit....
>>
I get mine from eBay. tinyurl.com/bvqkm92
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Sweet litttle bats - R.P.
