Donal Hickey: Looking at life from a bat's point of view

Myths about bats abound. One is that they can suck your blood, but bats in Ireland, which are protected by law, won’t harm you

Lesser horseshoe bats depend on features like stone walls and hedgerows to guide them. Picture: iStock

In most cases, research into animal behaviour is carried out from a human view. So, what’s interesting about a new study of horseshoe bats, near the Burren, is that it sets out to see a landscape from the bat’s eye view.

Lesser horseshoe bats generally don’t fly across open areas and depend on features like stone walls and hedgerows to guide them as they move from their roosts to feeding areas and back again. Large-scale destruction of the landscape has resulted in the loss of these guiding features for bats, however.

The Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT) has been using modern technology to map the flow of bats, basically placing bat detectors at sites to record activity from dusk to dawn when these creatures are most active.

What’s called “circuitscape modelling software’’ is being used for the study of 150 bats at Fiddaun Cottage, on the Clare/Galway border, and how they interact with the landscape within 2km of their roost.

Crucial to this project is the co-operation of 33 local landowners, mostly dairy farmers, who permitted the team to survey their lands. Lesser horseshoe bats have been recorded at 54 out of 76 sites, exceeding expectations.

Fiddaun Cottage provides an abundance of places for winter hibernation but lacks many of the species’ summer requirements like vegetated river corridors and mixed woodland. A motorway passes within 2km of the roost and there are large expanses of open marsh.

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Ruth Hannify, the VWT’s species conservation officer, says the aim is to map the activity from the bats’ perspective.

Bats move in linear style along walls and trees, for instance, but the study found they were also using less ideal routes like a single strand of electric fence when there was no alternative. “Our research supported the understanding that lesser horseshoe bats avoid flying across open fields,’’ Ms Hannify says.

They were, however, recorded over large open wetlands, which likely provide significant quantities of insects on which they feed.

Fieldwork has been completed. Next steps are to map and model the results and publish the findings, in that way building knowledge of how the species overcomes the challenges posed by fragmented habitat. The hope is to use this knowledge to benefit the species in the future.

Myths about bats abound. One is that they can suck your blood: rare vampire bats are found in South and Central America, but bats in Ireland, which are protected by law, won’t harm you.

Another is that they can get stuck in your hair. What happens is that they can swoop low over your head as they devour insects just before dark, performing a useful function by eating countless midges and mosquitos.