The Bats 9 i
heard the Bats in the masonry of Tankerstown Bridge scrambling and fighting
about an hour before they emerged, which they did between 9.30 and 10.30 in
June, coming out somewhat slowly. One night, when the weather was not good,
the Bats were returning again half an hour after they had emerged.
In summer Daubenton’s Bat frequently selects some old tree near water for a
diurnal retreat, but even at this season it sometimes lives in a cave, while the
roofs of buildings are also occupied. As a rule the retreat is near water, but in
some cases it is a considerable distance away, and examples have been found
where there is no open water in the neighbourhood, as, for instance, at Preston,
near Brighton. Caves are the most generally selected domiciles in winter, and
personally I have not met with this species in any other retreat, although it is
known to hibernate in the roofs of churches and other buildings. At Christchurch,
Hants, the verger informed me that large numbers of a small Bat occupied the
roof of the old church, both in summer and winter. I asked him to send me
some of these Bats, and in June 1902 received fifty-two, all of this species; there
were both males and females, and some young Bats, and I found that they
exhibited a greater variety in colouration than in the batch of Bats I received from
Hawkstone, Shropshire.
The late W. Borrer writes1 about the Bats in this church: ‘ One evening in
July 1899 I strolled into the churchyard of Christchurch, Hants, and my attention
was called to a great squeaking of Bats, of which I saw a continuous stream issuing
from an aperture in the north wall of the church. They all appeared to be
making towards the river; both their note and their flight were new to me. The
next day I called on the verger, and got him to show me into a chamber in the
church with which this aperture communicated; there, clinging to the ceiling and
the walls, I saw many hundreds of this species. The floor, too, had many large
heaps of their excrement, which I advised the aforesaid verger to experimentalise
with in his garden; in some places these heaps were quite knee-deep. The Bats
were clinging together in great masses; I stirred them up with a long stick, and
many took to flight. I had, however, great difficulty in capturing them with a
butterfly net, but, the place being very warm, I took off my coat, and, standing
quite still, was rather surprised as well as pleased to find that many settled on
my white shirt sleeves, and I easily took as many specimens as I required. On
several evenings after I saw numbers flitting much in the manner of sand
martins over the surface of the river near the bridge in the town, never appearing
1 Zoologist, 1874, p. 4125.