Batting it back

My friend Paul handed me a dead bat the other day. It was obviously a Long eared bat but which one; Brown or Grey.

Having been found locally it should have been the more widely distributed Brown long eared but several measurements were inconclusive and some features suggested the rarer Grey. In fact if it was Grey it would be a county first. Photographs and measurements were sent off to John Goldsmith the county recorder as well as the Norwich Bat Group … the conclusion … juvenile Brown Long eared Bat. We’ll just have to keep trying to find something new.

Some years ago I was brought several Brown Long eared Bats killed by a cat. Two of them bore rings and were subsequently found to have travelled around eight miles from the site where they were tagged. At the time this was the longest distance ever proven to have been travelled by a Brown long eared Bat within the UK! Not that those eight miles are a great distance but ringed recoveries of bats away from ringing sites are seldom made. Being denizens of darkness we still have much to discover about a quarter of the British Mammals that belong to the bat family but modern tracking systems are opening doors that were previously closed.