Bats in the Garden
A few years ago I bought Hodmandod Senior a bat detector. We sometimes go around the neighbourhood listening out for them - but last night they came to us (as they often do). They can be identified from the frequency of their clicks (there is an app for this, of course). Hodmandod Senior identified this as a Pipistrelle - the common sort.
A bat detector reveals a different world: not just bats, but the rustles of all sorts of other animals can be heard as they shift in their sleep.
posted by Clare Dudman at 8:07 am
4 Comments:
Bat detectors are brilliant! Many years ago when the Younger Offspring were 9 and 7, we went on a Bat Walk at a local National Trust property. The group leader discovered the perfect way to cheer up a whining 7-year-old. Give HER the counter, so she could tally the number of passing bats. In almost no time at all she'd counted 88. It's amazing what goes on almost right under one's nose without one knowing.
Heh, heh - excellent idea! That must have been an exciting bat walk - it would be wonderful to see where all those bat sleep during the day. It must have been some colony.
You don't need a bat detector to detect bats in Melbourne. Every evening we see squadrons of bats flying across the city in the twilight, on their way to plunder suburban gardens. Sometimes they fly so low you can hear their wing beats.
We used to get them in our back garden in our fruit trees, and they shriek and twitter. Alas the local possums have destroyed the fruit trees, so we longer get bats.
I will add that these bats are large fruit bats, also called flying foxes.
That's interesting , Anne. I just looked up Flying Foxes on Wikipedia, and apparently they do not have echolocation like our bats. I suppose they don't need it if they eat nectar and fruit (unlike ours which are after flying insects). Maybe they had it once and then lost it. They are a lot more cute to look at too. The need to hear and eat mid-air seems to turn a primate into a fearsome looking creature.
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