Feature: Nature - Bat walks - starting June 23rd at Kenwood House
Published: 17 June 2010
by JOSH LOEB
WHO needs wildlife documentaries when you can experience the real thing in your back garden or a local park?
In the long, warm summer evenings, small winged creatures zig-zag across the sky, completing spectacular aerial manoeuvres as they hunt insects using sonar.
Bats are strange, fascinating creatures. The only mammals that can fly, they spend the day and winter months dangling upside down in dark places, including the disused train tunnels under Highgate Wood and the crypts in the nearby cemetery.
On Hampstead Heath, at the source of the River Fleet, they come at dusk, swooping over the water to feed on midges or drink from the ponds.
Much-misunderstood creatures, bats are harmless to humans and are an important indicator of the health of an eco-system, says Philip Briggs, who monitors their populations for the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) charity.
“There are 16 breeding species of bat in Britain and Ireland,” says Mr Briggs as he leads a group of journalists on a bat walk through Regent’s Park. “The top five bats you are likely to see are the common pipistrelle, soprano pipistrelle, noctule, serotine and Daubenton’s bat.”
Our guide is armed with a bat detector that picks up the spluttering of their sonar.
“They are oblivious to us,” says Mr Briggs. “That’s the nice thing about watching bats. Unlike with a lot of wild animals that will get scared if you get close to them, bats will happily fly around close to you because they can’t distinguish you from any other obstacle they happen to be around.”
In an urban environment, being blind as a bat can sometimes mean being struck down by a cat’s paw.
“Cats will sit by windows and catch bats as they fly past,” says Mr Briggs.
A fragmented habitat is the most severe threat to the creatures, however, and the BCT has praised moves to preserve roosting sites such as those in Highgate.
“For the more adaptive species like pipistrelles, the numbers appear to be going up,” explains Mr Briggs. “Though for some of the less adaptable species, that’s not the case. Noctules, for example, have declined.”
One species that has long been extinct in London is the lesser horseshoe bat, a pair of which were found on the porch of HG Wells’s house off Baker Street in the 1920s.
“The last record of this species in London is from the early 1950s,” says Mr Briggs. “On HG Wells’s house there is a plaque saying ‘HG Wells lived here’. I always think that they should have another one saying, ‘two lesser horseshoe bats lived here’, because they are now as extinct in London as HG Wells is.”
The many myths surrounding bats are a testament to the animals’ uniqueness. They have long been associated with black magic and vampires. Mother Damnable of Kentish Town, a legendary “witch” who lived in Camden in the late-1600s, was said to have spots on her clothes that could turn into flying mice. “Nocturnal creatures seemed mysterious to people and a bit sinister before they could properly study them,” says Mr Briggs. “Because they came out at night, they were considered supernatural. There are vampire bats, but they’re confined to central and south America. They certainly don’t occur in Transylvania.”
And according to Jenny Clark, who runs a bat hospital in Sussex, bats are surprisingly sensitive animals. A healthy pipistrelle will cradle an injured bat if put in a container with it.
“I call them healing bats,” says Mrs Clark.
One of the quirkier bat walks the BCS leads takes place around the Houses of Parliament every year at the invitation of Madeleine Moon, Labour MP for Bridgend. MPs are invited along, and though street lights make the area in the immediate vicinity of Parliament too light for bats, good sightings are reported in nearby St James’s Park. Security guards sometimes report seeing a bat flying around the House of Commons, though Mr Briggs says he has never seen one. Another myth, perhaps.
•The Bat Conservation Trust runs a bat helpline which offers information on bats, including what to do if you have found an injured one. Call 0845 1300 228 or visit www.bats.org.uk