Batty about Bats!

Today, I am focusing on bats! I really love bats and find them amazing. There are many myths about bats and they have a bit of a reputation, thanks to the film industry, but to me they are beautiful. Their wings are like hands and the skin that joins them together is so delicate, so nimble and so powerful. They can eat 3000 insects in a single night (common pipistrelle) and if you plant a wildlife friendly garden you’ll definitely attract bats to your house. I f you’re lucky they might roost in your roof! Please don’t touch a bat or more importantly, harm a bat. They are a protected species! They are pollinators, pest controllers, seed dispersers and reforesters – what an amazing job description! You need a license to handle a bat and I am really lucky, because my dad has one and we get a few bat visitors to our house as rescues or unfortunarely, as little corpses – these help to understand the problems bats constantly face. Bats are really important for ecology, don’t be afraid of them! They won’t get tangled in your hair and they won’t suck your blood. They are wonderful mammals which should be respected but do pay attention, watch and listen to them; they are stunning!

Here is a picture of me and my dad with a rescued Pipistrelle:

image.jpeg

I have aso been working on bat statistics from CeDAR (Centre For Applied Data Analytics Research) on bat species and populations in C0.Fermanagh. I made a graph and this is what I found:

aaa dara bat graph

I also made a bat box for my Chief Cub Scout Award and along with my project, will help me get my ‘Environmental’ Badge.

I’m going out tonight with our bat detector to hopefully find some species. A bat detector is brilliant because each bat species can be identified by frequency, so if the dial measures 45-50 kHz, we know it’s a Pipistrelle, so cool!

Just a short blog tonight, as it’s getting far too late on a school night!

I hope you enjoyed reading about bats!

Dara

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7 Responses

  1. Hi Dara! Greetings from Australia.

    Nice work on your blog. Bats are very cool.

    Over here we get a lot of fruitbats flying over during the evenings in Summer and Autumn, in search of fruit-laden trees. I’m not sure what they do in Winter, after all the fruit has fallen from the trees. I don’t think they’ve discovered greengrocers or supermarkets yet.

    Looking forward to seeing more of your observations over the coming months. Keep up the good work!

  2. Bats need good “public relations” as they are misunderstood by people who never see them. It’s a good thing they have you in their corner!! Your blog is fascinating reading.

  3. Hi Dara,
    It’s very nice reading about your adventures in Fermanagh’s nature. Already have learned a couple of things . For instance I didn’t know there were bat detectors and that you can recognize a species by its frequency. I live in quite a crowded area in the Netherlands and have seen bats disappear from our neighbourhood, which is a shame because they’re so crafty in their movements. I liked to watch them in the evenings. Keep up the good work Dara, I’ll subscribe to your blog, looking forward to read more.
    Marjolijn

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