Thursday marked the last occasion I was likely to be dancing with Beltane for some time. We headed to the Old Church House Inn at Torbryan and it was a brilliant, but emotional night of songs and adieus to my lovely friends. How fitting thing that the evening should reveal the inky treasure of a Lesser Horseshoe bat.
A couple of weeks ago a friend at Beltane introduced me to their heterodyne detector and provided the inspiration to buy one, as I've never before used them or properly seen them in action. We spent an hour in Exeter enjoying the sound waves of Daubenton bats, skimming the surface of the quay water and catching insects (which was wonderful enough) but on Thursday, we crept off to an area around the redundant mediaeval church with our devices and were given the treat of this rare little creature. I'm assured that it was a lesser and not a greater horseshoe by the distinctive frequency of it's echolocation.
It get's it's name from a characteristic horseshoe shaped nose and is one of the world's smallest bats. It has strong feet that it uses to grasp rocks and branches, and can see well in spite of its small eyes. Like most bats, lesser horseshoe bats live in colonies and hunt their prey by emitting ultrasound from specialized round pads in their mouth.
The base of its fur, which is soft and fluffy, is light grey in colour, with dorsal side fur smoky brown and grey, with the exception of juvenile bats which are entirely dark grey. When hunting they are quick and agile, often flying within five metres of the ground while avoiding contact with bushes and shrubs eating small insects, most of which are gleaned from stones and branches.
Lesser horseshoe bats mate in the autumn. Females give birth to one cub, normally between mid-June and the beginning of July. Pups open their eyes after around 10-days and becoming independent at six to seven weeks of age. The bats hibernate during the winter months in dark caves, mines, old buildings, and sometimes in cellars. Myths about bats are found in many human cultures. The ancient Egyptians believed that bats could prevent or cure poor eyesight, toothache, fever, and baldness, and a bat hung over the doorway of a home was thought to prevent the entry of demons that carried these “diseases.”
Bat gods were important to many pre-Colombian civilisations in central America, and bats have been used in voodoo worship in parts of Africa as well as in many parts of the Caribbean even today. The association of bats with the legend of human vampires has an uncertain origin, but since the time of Cortez and his Conquistadors, peoples of western civilisation have linked vampire bats with the legendary “human” vampires of Transylvania. The writings of William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others have contributed to legends that cast a veil of fear on people, as they associate bats with graveyards, death, ghosts, and goblins. To the Chinese, bats are regarded as symbols of happiness and good fortune. At one time Chinese mothers would sew small jade buttons in the shape of a bat on the caps of their babies, a custom believed to impart long life.
Below is a copy of a Taino Indian legend, called 'The Vain Bat' which I thought was a good little parable:
'When time was yet in the cradle, there was no uglier creature in the world than the bat. The bat went up to heaven to look for God and said: “I’m bored with being hideous. Give me coloured feathers!” No. He said, “Please give me feathers, I’m dying of cold!” But God had not a single feather left over. “Each bird will give you a feather,” he decided. Thus the bat got the white feather of the dove and the green one of the parrot, the iridescent one of the hummingbird, the pink one of the flamingo, the red of the cardinal’s tuft and the blue of the kingfisher’s back, the clayey one of the eagle’s wing and the sun feather that burns in the breast of the toucan.
The bat, luxuriant with colours and softness, moved between earth and clouds. Wherever he went, the air became pleasant and the birds dumb with admiration. According to the Zapotec peoples, the rainbow was born of the echo of his flight but, vanity puffed out his chest. He acquired a disdainful look and made insulting remarks.
The birds called a meeting, together they flew up to God. “The bat makes fun of us,” they complained. “And what’s more, we feel cold for lack of the feathers he took.” Next day, when the bat shook his feathers in full flight, he suddenly became naked. A rain of feathers fell to earth.
He is still searching for them, blind and ugly, enemy of the light, he lives hidden in caves. He goes out in pursuit of the lost feathers after night has fallen and flies very fast, never stopping because it shames him to be seen.'
It was in no way possible to get a picture but I'm going to head back there with a red light to try to record some video of it, if we're lucky enough to encounter it again. In the meantime, here's my favourite picture of me looking most like a bat doing one of my best-loved things in the world.
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