I like these RSPB Spotlight books (see reviews of Kingfishers and Bumblebees). This one is about bats.
It’s quite a wide-ranging book with information about the 17 UK species but also about a range of the world’s other 1400 bats.
It’s understandable that we don’t know a huge amount about bats – they are nocturnal, they make sounds that are too highly-pitched for us to notice them without special equipment, and they hide away in caves and trees for much of the day, indeed much of the year. Added to which, the UK species are all rather similar – they are about the same size and brown.
However, bats are fascinating and we are finding out more and more about them all the time. Well, for a start, since I did my PhD on the Pipistrelle Bat we have realised that there are two relatively common species of Pipistrelle in the UK, Common and Soprano, and another species (Nathusius’) which is commoner than we used to believe.
Bats sing, they have delayed fertilisation (where females mate in autumn but ovulate in the spring), they use echolocation to find their way around in the dark and also to capture insects in flight and they have a further range of social behaviours that are now becoming better understood.
Bats are fascinating – but they don’t photograph well. I used to defend bats as being cute (which they are) and interesting (which they are) when I studied them, and they are a bit cuddly (though rather small to cuddle) when seen close up, but they have got quite ugly faces with sharp little teeth. Having said that, there are some attractive images in this book including a hibernating Myotis covered in droplets of water, Honduran White Bats and a Daubenton’s Bat scooping up an insect from the water surface but the best image, for me, is the expression on a man’s face as he looks at a Noctule Bat in someone’s hand.
This is a fact-packed book that will get you started with an interest in bats and probably encourage you to explore further. It would suit bat enthusiasts of most ages from 10 to 100.
Bats by Nancy Jennings is published by Bloomsbury.
Remarkable Birds by Mark Avery is published by Thames and Hudson – for reviews see here.
Inglorious: conflict in the uplands by Mark Avery is published by Bloomsbury – for reviews see here.
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