This evening at dusk, a pretty one too, I saw small bats, pipistrelles I guess, four times fluttering up and down the gardens behind the house we are in at the moment, 300 yards or so south of Notting Hill Gate. Perhaps there were only two of them but I saw one hunting in the gardens four times. Good for the soul, the sight of a bat or two.
I wonder where they live though. Perhaps in an absentee Russian oligarch's upper rooms. I can see five houses only 40 yards away through the thick undergrowth in the gardens behind this house. Three of them have lights on in the halls and staircases after dark. In five days here I haven't seen a single human being in any of them, although I heard a noisy party further down towards Kensington High St last night.
A week or so ago though my granddaughter's cat killed a long-eared bat down in Surrey. I suppose the bat flew carelessly low and the cat got it with a lucky swipe. Undoubtedly illegal and the cat deserves an ASBO or clip round the ear, except that it wouldn't understand. The late bat was a splendid creature, poor little devil. My daughter took a photo of the corpse.
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Its a wild and violent place is Surrey.
We get the small bats here at dusk. Not sure where they roost, but the the Vet lab has large farming grounds with many barns.
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Plenty of bats around here - I suspect an empty house up the lane harbours them....an expensive shock to any prospective buyer....Work was halted on a chapel conversion in the village whilst the Council Bat Officer fluttered in..
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you need to watch the bats round our way. If they do come from the Vet Lab farms, strange things happen down there - two headed sheep were seen in the distand fields behind barbed wire once....
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Pipistrelles tend to roost in mature trees in summer rather than in builidngs. Have a couple of old oak trees in the garden and they can often be seen flying around at dusk. If you throw a handful of soil in the air they will momentarily swoop at it as they "see" it as a swarm of insects.
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There was a bats problem with a by-pass locally a few years ago - it was built with the proviso that there were low level lights along the affected length together with 2m high roadside nets to stop the bats swooping into the path of Jugernuggernauts..
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Lovely critters.
We lived in Austin which is supposedly home to the largest urban bat population in the US.
About one and a half million Mexican free-tail bats roost under Congress bridge and it's a spectacular sight to see them all take flight at dusk.
They do a good job too - eating around 15 tons of insects each night.
Kevin...
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Plenty of bats in my area around dusk. From what I can gather they live in the loft areas of nearby properties, gaining entry via areas under the leading roof tiles.
Not doing anyone any harm...:-)
PS
Some of the people who live around here are bats as well....:-)
Last edited by: Stuartli on Mon 23 Aug 10 at 23:54
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We have bats living upstairs in the attic. They are mostly pipistrelles, but occasionally we see a bigger one, no idea what kind.
Sometimes in the late evening one ventures downstairs, and one of the children calls to have it removed from their bedroom. The technique is to shut the door and open the window wide, and it usually flies out. Doubtness it quickly makes it way round back in under the eaves again.
They are lovely creatures, and quite harmless, and with a superb navigational ability. Unlike a bird trapped in the house, which blunders around knocking things over and scrabbling at the windows, bats seem to know exactly where they are going.
The cats do get very excited though - perhaps they can hear their high-pitched signals?
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Bats - Zero
