Bats in your garden
Having bats in your garden is a fantastic way of measuring its biodiversity.
Many of us will have occasionally spotted a bat zipping about, turning on a six-pence above our heads when sitting out into the dusk following a barbecue. However how do you ensure that they can remain and thrive?
Although 18 bat species have been recorded in the UK many are becoming increasingly rare. Usually if you see them it is probably a Pipistrelle - our most common bat - a tiny flying mammal that weighs the same as a 20p coin.
UK bats are exclusively insectivorous which means that they will only be present in a healthy garden with a thriving diversity of insects and other invertebrates. You will however only see them from spriung to autumn, as they hibernate through the cold UK winter - although young bats leave the next in around August so numbers in your garden should peak around then.
So how can you attract bats to your garden? You can put up a bat box although it may takle some time before bats start to roost there. The best way though is to ensure they can eat whilst weaving and jinking across the night sky above your garden.
As mentioned above bats eat insects so let your garden naturalise, avoid poisons of any kind, add a pond (either a large focal point or just a small pool in an out-of-the-way spot), and keep, maintain or add linear hedgerows and the occasional tree.
You can also grow night scented flowers, to attract night-flying insects. Commonly planted for this purpoise and honeysuckles (cultivars of Lonicera periclymenum), Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis), and the Tobacco plant (Nicotiana alata - of which I prefer the white varieties to stand out at night).
Other plants you may consider include White jasmine (Jasminum officinale), Star jasmine (Trachelopspermum jasminoides), Night-scented catchfly (Silene noctiflora), Nottingham catchfly (Silene nutans), Miss Wilmott’s Ghost (Eryngium giganteum), or Sweet rocket (Hesperis matronalis var. alba).
A Common pipistrelle may eat up to 3,000 tiny insects each night so nature will balance the increase in insect numbers with an increase in their predators - and in the process provide a noctural hunt to rival an exotic safari. You just need to go outside and look up….or perhaps even purchase a bat detector and listen as well (when walking in the country along hedge-lines this is especially important as somehow the bats always seem to approach from behind)!