Bats beat against black sky, swooping over oak into the far field. Each flight prompts a jolt – a flinch at approaching wings that subsides as suddenly as it arrives – a rare enchantment left behind. Standing in the doorway, with a swell of warmth at my back and the cold, dark night in front, it is jarring, at first, to have them fly so close. There is a feeling that they should be further out, and I further in, and yet, here we both are at the threshold.
These greater horseshoes are busy rearing their young. Mating in the autumn but not ovulating until spring, in the summer months pregnant bats gather in quiet buildings like barns and churches to give birth, deftly, upside down. The UK’s largest maternity roost is in Buckfastleigh in Devon, some 20 miles from here on the south-east fringe of Dartmoor, home to over a thousand females in the summer months.
The limestone quarries and woodland of neighbouring town Chudleigh are a special area of conservation for the species. Mothers forage near the roost, either by aerial hawking – flying low over the ground to catch insects in transit – or flycatching, using a perch as a base from which to make swift sorties. I glimpse the moths they prey on: tiny, wavering wingbeats.
The largest of the UK’s bats, the greater horseshoe, has a wingspan of up to 40cm. Distinctive folds of skin around the nostrils, called a nose-leaf, form the shape of a horseshoe. Their population has declined by 90% in the UK over the past hundred years, with the depletion of woodland and hedgerows, and use of pesticides, diminishing hunting grounds and insect numbers. They have lost over half their range.
These bats are keeping a furious pace, silhouetted for split seconds against the shine of ancient stars. There is a staggering between the distant and the revealed, a tussle between the visible and concealed. Rapid wings pierce the deep night, shuffled sorties strain through starlight as I close the door on these light-shy, nocturnal neighbours – sky fizzing with their hidden labours.
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