Same bat time, same bat station*
I have bats. No, really. In fact I have a lot of bats. Stop that laughing.** These are real bats. Pipistrelles, in fact: the common pipistrelle, which is also the commonest bat species in the UK; but all bats are protected, and you’re not allowed to disturb a roost. Not that I want to. Eat bugs! Eat more bugs! Bats are my friends! Yesssssss!
There are about a million and a half links for info about pipistrelles*** but here are a couple to get you started. I admit that the opening screen of the first one is not exactly reassuring, but they’re tiny and furry and they eat millions of bugs so never mind about the teeth, and I persist in finding them cute. Which is a good thing, as it turns out.
http://www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/bats/britishbats/batpages/commonpipi.htm
http://www.arkive.org/pipistrelle-bats/pipistrellus-pipistrellus-and-pipistrellus-pygmaeus/
My bat odyssey began about three weeks ago. I was out in the garden at oh . . . ten o’clock or so. In the evening, I mean. It was an evening Peter was playing bridge and I was not bell ringing and it wasn’t dark yet†, so I was still out there. I don’t know why I happened to look up—well, I like watching flying things swoop around†† and something must have caught my eye. I looked up. There were several of them, whatever they were, darting and swooping. My eye was drawn to where they seemed to be coming from . . . which was a corner of my house. As I stood there another one shot out from under the eaves. And another one. And another one. Eeep.
I assumed they had to be swifts or house martins or similar because they were so noisy. I did think of bats because they were emerging at dusk, but anything that likes bugs might very well come out for a cruise at twilight—and, as I say, they were noisy. Bats are silent, right? Their echolocation pings are out of range unless you have very good hearing, and I haven’t had very good hearing in a couple of decades.††† I stood there getting a crick in my neck and watched them blip into existence, one after another after another after another after . . . little dark winged bodies materialising in the dusk and then zinging off in all directions, whoop zap. I counted about thirty after I started counting, and there’d probably been a dozen or so before that. Golly. Whatever they are, they like it here. They’ve brought all their sisters and cousins and aunts. And however many came pouring out, the mad chittering under the eaves didn’t seem to be getting any less.
I went indoors thoughtfully (rubbing my stiff neck). Next day I went up into the attic and stood in the corner where the things had come from the night before . . .and I could hear them chittering away like anything—I’m glad I sleep a floor down and on the other side of the house—but I could see no traces of them inside (whew).
I told Penelope about them the next time I saw her, because she’s very good on natural history, and her first reaction to the chittering was the same as mine—us old folks can’t hear bats. It must be some kind of bird. But she agreed to come round one evening the following week and watch the exodus. I took her up into the attic first‡ and she listened to the chittering—so far as I can tell they sit around up there and talk all day—and said, Mammal. That’s definitely a mammal noise.
We then retired to sit‡‡ in the garden and wait for the air show. First one popped out and Penelope said, bat. Yup. Bat. You have bats. This time of year it’ll be a nursery roost: mums with babies. And the next day she sent me the contact info for the Hampshire Bat Group [sic].
This time of year official bat group members are out every night counting bats. My local pair had trouble fitting me in. But they said they could come round tonight, at about 9 pm. And I said that I probably wouldn’t get home till about 9:20‡‡‡ but I’d leave the greenhouse door open and they could come through into the garden for the bat spectacle.
I got home to find two wired-up people in my back garden, staring up at my roof, listening to their radio gizmos on headphones, and clicking their counters furiously as my bats dove out of their hideaway and into the bug-laden air. Go bats! Eat! Eat! Click click click clickclickclick click click . . . Blimey, said the man. Turns out there’s a second exit round the corner in the peak of the roof, so he was getting more bat-clicks than his wife. They told me my tenants are the common pipistrelles, but while they’re not endangered, all bat populations have been dropping, which I knew, and the woman said that by percentages the pipistrelles have dropped more drastically than some—which I did not know—so it’s always good to see them thriving somewhere.
Okay. Are you ready for this?
Final count: 410. I have four hundred and ten teeny-weeny pipistrelle bats living between my roof and my attic ceiling.§ And maybe a few more, since any late babies may not be flying yet.
They said that this is the biggest mum-and-baby roost they’ve seen, and that it’s a sign of the good health of the environment—well, I don’t spray, so all the bugs they’re eating in my garden are finest kind, and I use eco-green stuff indoors, so there are no noxious fumes in my attic either.
I don’t just have bats. I have serious bats. Beam.
* * *
* And no, actually, I am not a huge wet nostalgic fan of the old Adam West TV show. As far as I’m concerned it came out at exactly the wrong time with the result that my life was made a misery for several years by teenage boys saying, Hey, Robin, where’s Batman?, and then laughing like drains.
Although my then-boyfriend did convert me to comic books when The Dark Knight Returns came out in 1986. Ah, yes, the 80s, when I finally got round to having my adolescence. I was way too weird and serious when I was a teenager. Aggravated, possibly, by a lot of teenage boys shouting HEY ROBIN, WHERE’S BATMAN during a delicate transitional period.
** You’re going to hurt my feelings.
*** And an awful lot of video. Once you get on YouTube you could be there for a week, although a lot of it isn’t very good, and some of it is rather alarming, like one of someone letting a pip crawl through his fingers. I don’t think the pip is having a very good time.
Bats apparently count pretty high on the ick-o-meter though because I notice that the come-hither column of other video clips down the right hand side moves into monster spiders pretty quickly. Anyone out there remember Attack of the Fifty-Foot Spider^ last autumn? I posted photos. I’m also still suffering traumatic flashbacks and view the approach of this autumn nervously. One of the videos shows someone letting one of these gigantico house spiders climb over his hand. Although I don’t think the spider is having a good time either.
^ Which Black Bear kept insisting was a male looking for a mate. It was a FEMALE, okay? F-E-M-A-L-E. Females are bigger. It was not a male. Not. Very, very, very not.
† It kills me that less than a month after the longest day the nights are already closing in again. I know they do this every year. Every year I get all whiny about it.
†† Yes, this predates PEGASUS.
††† The Bat Conservation Trust^’s own downloadable pdf tells you that you can’t hear the radar pings and doesn’t say a thing about social calls.
^ which I belong to. Just by the way. Conserve a critter? You bet. Where do I sign.
‡ And derived the distinct impression that she looked round at everything up there a little wildly.
‡‡ Yes! Sit! As any crazed gardener knows, the last thing you do in your garden is sit in it!!
‡‡‡ I went bell ringing. With Niall. To Colin’s tower. I said to Colin, so, on a scale of one to ten, how bad was yesterday’s quarter? And he said (more or less), lighten up. The striking was not 100%, no, but I don’t like Grandsire Triples^, I call by the treble, and if you hadn’t led bang right every row, we wouldn’t have got the quarter.
Whatever. I still need more practise. Aside from needing more practise anyway because bell ringing is like that and time on a rope is the only grail there is, I need practise ringing on eight. And I don’t know how I’m going to get it, since eight-bell bands are kinda rare in my bailiwick, even where we’ve got the bells, drat it.
However I rang several touches of Stedman doubles (six bells) and a not-all-that-bad-and-was-only-yelled-at-twice plain course of Cambridge minor (six bells) tonight, which was very good for morale—and feels pretty idiotic that I’m ringing comparatively high level stuff on six when I can barely stagger through trebling on eight. I said as much to Niall on the way home and he said, crossly for him—neither he nor Colin does cranky like readers of this blog know cranky—stop beating yourself up, okay?
I still need more practise on eight bells.
^Even Colin has faults
§ And no, I don’t have to worry about this. I knew bats weren’t rodents and don’t gnaw, but I didn’t know they don’t do anything but crawl into spaces that are already there and hang out. And their droppings are dried-up insect bits, and unless the roof leaks, they disintegrate into dust. As tenants go you can’t really ask for better. So long as you aren’t trying to sleep in the next room.
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