Bats
There are 17 species of bats resident in the
Female bats generally only have one infant per year, forming nursing colonies in trees and buildings in which to raise their young. During the winter months, there is less insect prey available for bats, so during this time they hibernate in trees, buildings or caves, occasionally emerging to eat or drink.
Here are some interesting bat facts:
- A tiny pipistrelle bat can eat up to 3,000 insects in a night.
- Bats can live up to 30 years.
- Bats are more closely related to people than mice.
Britain's most common bat, the pipistrelle, is only 4cm long and weighs about 5 grams - less than a 2p coin! - Bats do not build nests; they hang up or creep into cracks and crannies.
- Bats have excellent navigation skills - they won't get caught in your hair!
Threats to Bats in Britain
UK bat populations have declined considerably during the past century. They continue to be threatened by various factors including:
- Loss of feeding habitats and flightlines.
- Loss of insects to feed on as a result of habitat loss, pesticides.
- Climate change.
- Loss of roost sites as a result of building and development work.
- Artificial light illuminating roosts and delaying emergence of bats, leading to shorter hunting windows for the mammals.
Nestboxes for Bats
Although not as widely used as bird boxes, bats can be offered additional roost sites by the provision of purpose built bat boxes. These can be installed as high as possible on trees or on the side of buildings. The box should face approximately south, away from the prevailing weather, but additional boxes can also be installed on the same tree or nearby to face south-east and south-west to give the bats a choice of roosts to compensate for the position of the sun at different times of the year.
Boxes are most likely to be used if they are placed in an area where bats are likely to feed, such as near rivers and ponds, woodland and parkland.
Wildlife World manufacturer bat boxes that can be installed to help these threatened mammals,
UK Bats and the Law
All British bats and their roosts are protected by
UK law and it is an offence to handle or intentionally disturb a wild bat unless you possess the appropriate licence. If a building has a bat roost, the building cannot be developed without fisrt contacting the local authority to ensure the mammals are not compromised. These restrictions are vital to ensure these threatened small mammals are afforded as much protection as possible. Using a Bat Detector to Identify Bats
Identifying bats can be a challenging task, and although common species can be identified with some basic knowledge, an electronic bat detector like the Wildlife World BD detector will greatly aid identification of rarer species.
Bats flying in similar woodland habitats will need similar information to navigate around, and so different species’ echolocation calls can sound very familiar. However, away from the roost, their calls become more species specific, and so this is often the best place to use a bat detector to distinguish between different species.
The bat detector transforms the non-audible ultrasonic sounds into sounds that humans can hear. The
Wildlife World Bat Detector has a wide frequency range, but it is recommended to initially set the detector at 45kHz, as most bats call through this frequency. Then the detector can be tuned above and below this range to identify the peak frequency to which the bat is calling (identified by lower sounds). A note can be made of the tone, rhythm and repetition rate of the bat and then this information compared to reference charts.
