Little Trekkers Ambassadors Ambassador Blog Environmental Education and Wildlife A Visit From Batman
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A Visit From Batman
Reuben came home from school last week and excitedly told us that they'd had a visit from Batman. We later discovered that it was a volunteer from the local bat conservation group rather than Bruce Wayne.
During the visit to school, the bat man talked to the children about bats; what they eat; how they live; how they hunt for food; and lots more. He also brought along a tiny pipistrelle bat that he was nursing back to health after it had been attacked by a cat.
Reuben enjoyed telling us all about bats, and was very excited when the whole class were invited to an evening bat walk at a local nature reserve. When the day arrived, Reuben excitedly got dressed in his warm clothes and head torch and we set out in search of bats.
It was still light when we arrived, so the first challenge was to search for and learn about other woodland creatures. To help with this the bat man had set some friendly traps which he opened one by one to reveal their temporary inhabitants. The children squealed excitedly as they saw some wood mice, a bank vole and a snail. Several mums also squealed at the sight of the mice, although I'm not sure it was with excitement.
Then as the light started to fade, the children were paired up, given bat detectors, and sent off to listen for clicks. Twenty minutes of listening and running around followed, but there were no bats to be heard or seen. Then just as we were walking along the path out of the woods on our way home we saw one. It was very small and incredibly fast, but it was definitely a bat and we walked home happy.
Inspired by the experience, Reuben now wants to go bat hunting again. He especially liked the idea that we may have bats flying over our garden eating all of the flying bugs.
Do you have any bat stories to share?
Comments (3)
I love bats! I know someone who has looked after a few baby bats before and I helped feed them mealworms (we had to chop the heads off the mealworms and squeeze the juicy bit out of the middle! Eurrghh!). They were tiny and needed a lot of looking after :) I've been to the 'Bat Cave' at Chester Zoo too, it's really good as long as you can stand it being a bit stinky!
What a fantastic school trip. I would love to do something like that with my 2 girls.
We saw lots of sleeping bats when we visited Bodium Castle in East Sussex last Summer. Does that count?
Oh and I agree with Kylie - the bat area of the castle was a little whiffy!
What a great idea. We saw some people with big aerials walkning along when we were on one of our biking weekends recently. They said they were tracking bats in the woods. I didn't really fully understand at the time and we had to move on for various reasons but now reading your post I get what they were doing with the aerials. When I was young we would have bats flying around the garden at dusk but in Auckland you don't get them. It has given me an idea for another outing!! :o)