NATURAL ELTHAM
mainly associated with trick or treaters. What many people don’t realise is that the area plays host to large numbers of the real thing.
Bat Season Over
Hallowe’en, the streets of SE9 are full of bats,
This autumn, bat walks in The Tarn, Avery Hill, Shrewsbury Park and Sutcliffe Park have revealed that, when the sun goes down, the flying mammals take to the skies in numbers.
What they found were four different species; common and soprano pipistrelle, noctule and serotine, all attracted out at dusk by their prey, small insects.
At Shrewsbury Park Xavier Hamon from the Bat Conservation Trust took a party of 40 people on a fairly clear-sky night. The temperature was below ideal, reducing the insect count. Bats prefer to leave their roosts when there's an abundance of food, so warm evenings are the best.
Xavier brought an essential tool, the bat detector, which picks up the high frequency echo-location sounds they make to detect their prey, which are outside the range of the human ear. Fortunately, each species uses a different frequency, enabling the adjustable device to distinguish the flapping figures above our heads
The Soprano Pipistrelle comes in at 55kHz, and the Common Pipistrelle, the first we found, at 45kHz. As the name suggests, it’s the most numerous in the UK, although numbers have fallen in recent years, drastically reduced over the decades as available nest sites in houses have been most restricted.
As the evening wore on the bats were calling more frequently, and we heard the Soprano crystal-clear at 55kHz, confirming our second species for the night! As the sound came and went we realised the bats were frequenting the tree-tops above us, and with patience
34 Bat catching a Moth
wherever insects are present and light levels are low. One novelty observed at Avery Hill was among the floodlights at Charlton Athletic’s training ground. Although the bats hate the light, their
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SEnine Jason Gr
we were rewarded with the odd glimpse of these small mammals!
In the Mottingham Tarn and Sutcliffe Park the two pipistrelle species were also found but at Avery Hill, noctules and serotines were also discovered; the serotines were found at the New Eltham end of the park while the noctules among the more central groves and towards Pippen Hall. The walks, organised by leaders of the local cubs, brownies and scouts were hoping a fifth of the UK’s 18 species might be present, the long-eared bat but their call is more elusive.
But it’s not just parks where the bats are found; they can be found swooping through back gardens across the area,
Jason GreenJason Green
prey is drawn in large numbers. The canny bats have evolved a way of ‘diving’ in and out of the lights for their dinners and back into the gloaming. Perhaps fans of Charlton Athletic?
This harvest will help sustain the bats over their winter hibernation, starting this month and running until the breeding season in spring. So among the Hallowe’en fun, keep a careful eye out for the last sighting of the year; if not a real Dracula, you may see a real bat or two.
Bat Fact
There are 17 species of bats resident in the UK - that's more than
a quarter of our mammal species. A tiny pipistrelle bat can eat up
to 3,000 insects in a night. All native British bats eat insects. Bats usually only have one baby
at a time and 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! There are over 1,100 bat species in the world (accounting for 20% of all mammal species). Three-quarters of these eat insects just as British bats do. In the tropics bats also eat many other foods - fruit, flowers,
frogs, fish, blood, even other bats! Bats do not build nests; they hang up or creep into cracks and
crannies. Bats are not blind; in fact they
can see almost as well as humans. To hunt in the dark, they use a remarkable high frequency system
called echolocation. The largest bats are the flying foxes with wingspans of up to 2 metres and a body weight of 1.5
kilograms The smallest is the bumblebee bat, weighing only 2 grams, it is the world’s smallest mammal
Take a walk in the Pleasaunce
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