If you were wandering around Aston Flamville on Thursday 28th August about 8pm you may have spotted a number of mysterious people ‘lurking’ around St Peter’s Church churchyard.  Well, they were the St Catherine’s Eco Group and we were Bat Spotting. Don Peacock had arranged for Ann and Natalie from the Bat Society  to come along and set up their video and recording equipment.  We discovered that we had two species of Pipistrelle  Bats in the church. The common pipistrelle and the soprano pipistrelle (they were only split in the 1990’s, when it was discovered they had two distinct frequencies that each species use to echo locate). Both species were detected on the night we were there.

 There is a fair number of them also roosting in the trees. The ones in the church do not fly around in the day but fly around in the evening to warm up before going outside to catch insects.  We, the Eco Group asked if we needed to install bat boxes to secure their future but the good news is, it

was deemed unnecessary as they were thriving.

A few facts about Bats:

1.  They have never needed to evolve. A bat skeleton was discovered that was about 250 million years old and it was the same as the ones that are flying around today.

2.  A female bat will mate to become pregnant but will not start her pregnancy until climate conditions are good. If during the pregnancy the weather conditions become poor she will ‘stop’ the pregnancy until the conditions improve. Then she will recommence it.

3. The world’s smallest bat is the Bumblebee Bat, while the largest is the Giant Golden-crowned Flying Fox, with a wingspan of up to 6 feet.