Little Monsters

Once seen as a menace, bats are now a protected species and old churches have long proved a favourite roosting spot. Can a new initiative persuade people that having bats in the belfry is actually a good thing? Mark Hillsdon finds out

- Mark Hillsdon

It was just before dusk when the bat detector began emitting a series of beeps and warbles, somewhere between a Geiger counter and a Clanger. “Common pip,” says Steve Parker, from the South Lancashire Bat Group, as an indistinguishable black shape flutters across the glowering sky. My eyes strain as I peer into the gloom, trying to catch a glimpse as it shoots down the side of St Mary’s, a magnificent Grade-I listed church in Cheshire. Set in a large, grassy churchyard, edged by trees and overlooking Rostherne Mere, this is bat heaven.

“The best way to view them is get as much sky in your field of vision as possible,” adds Steve, although it’s his expert ears that decipher the next audio footprint, revealing we’ve just been buzzed by a soprano pipistrelle, hawking the night air for dinner.

Bats are the only mammals that can fly (although a handful of other species can glide short distances), using a thin membrane of skin supported by what would be their fingers, with the thumb used for climbing. Their family name, Chiroptera, means ‘hand wing’.

There are 17 species in the UK, all of which are insectivores, with most catching their prey on the wing – although a few, such as the Natterer’s bat, are ‘gleaners’, plucking moths and lacewings from vegetation and then flying to a favourite perch to feed.

Steve is passionate about them all, spending most of his spare time surveying and recording them. “I find bats absolutely fascinating,” he says. “I think they’re beautiful creatures… intriguing.”

BATS IN CHURCHES

Bats haven’t always been popular, however. Perhaps because of their nocturnal habits, bats have long been demonised and cast as witches’ familiars or servants of the devil.