British Go to Bat for Beleaguered Winged Mammals : Preservation: Supporters have come up with the Bat News, the Batalogue, the “Bat Helpline†and National Bat Week.
WESTMILL, England — St. Mary the Virgin has bats. It’s a bother, but everyone does try not to mind.
No, they are not in the belfry.
“It’s quite unusual for bats to use belfries,†said Brian Briggs, one of the many certified bat fanciers in Hertfordshire. “They’re usually cold and drafty places.â€
Retired Rear Adm. Kyrle Pope, the church warden, strolled down the aisle pointing out droppings in the nave, on window sills.
“We usually have a clean white cloth over the altar, and occasionally we will find a bat dropping on it,†he said. “Only a pipistrelle. Nothing to worry one.â€
Pipistrelles, Britain’s most common bat, weigh less than a quarter and would fit easily into a matchbox. Like all the 15 types in Britain, they eat insects--up to 3,000 a night.
Pro-bat groups began organizing after Parliament declared the winged mammals a protected species in 1981. They now have 2,000 members and work with the government to enforce the law.
Briggs and his wife, Patty, took the tour with Pope. Their Hertfordshire group--one of 74 covering every county in England, Scotland and Wales--keeps in touch with the others through a yearly conference and the newsletter Bat News.
Another convenience is the Batalogue, a national publication that offers recorded bat calls and bat-shaped objects like earrings, door knockers and refrigerator magnets.
The Briggses were called to the church in Westmill, a village 20 miles north of London, because some unusually large droppings indicated the possible presence of a rare bat.
Their search led them up a narrow spiral staircase to the room behind the steeple clock, where bat signs were unmistakable: scratch marks, droppings and piles of moth wings.
The Briggses concluded it was the dining room of long-eared bats, which are only slightly less common than pipistrelles.
No bats were in the room, dining or otherwise. Briggs blamed an unseasonably cold May, which kept all “smart, self-respecting†bats in hibernation.
St. Mary’s bat problem pales beside that of St. John the Baptist in nearby Great Gaddesden.
At St. John’s, Briggs said, 300 pipistrelles were roosting inside the hollow roof beams. When they became agitated by the singing of hymns below, he said, guano would shake loose and fall through cracks in the beams.
“All the droppings would fall down on the front two pews, which was where all the rich hoi polloi happened to sit,†he said, with a certain relish.
Since bats are protected, church leaders had to call the government for help. Briggs and other volunteers plugged the cracks.
Britain’s bats are becoming popular, their champions say. The Briggses said they got 10 telephone calls a day from the curious during last year’s National Bat Week.
“We used to have people call and say, ‘We’ve got bats, how can we get rid of them?’ †said bat expert Robert Stebbings. “Now, we hear, ‘We’ve got a house in the country. How do we attract bats?’ â€
Stebbings, who has studied bats since childhood, runs a 24-hour “Bat Helpline.â€
For injured bats, there are the Isle of Wight Bat Hospital and St. Tiggywinkles animal hospital.
Stalwart defense of animals is a British trait. Britain pioneered test-tube parakeets in 1986, introduced toad tunnels beneath highways and provided escape ramps for hedgehogs caught under cattle grids.
Despite the coddling, British bats are disappearing, killed by pesticides and deprived of traditional forest roosts by development.
The pipistrelle population has dwindled by two-thirds in a decade, and Britain’s claim to 15 of the world’s 1,000 bat species probably should be lowered to 14. Last winter, the last mouse-eared bat, an old male, failed to arrive at its regular hibernation site.
Some Britons continue to withhold their affections from bats, however difficult that may seem. Among them are Westmill’s 89-year-old Buchanan twins, Isabelle and Flora.
They told the Briggses about more than 30 years of living with bats in their white-and-blue cottage: a bat in a bedroom slipper, bats hanging in the curtains, bats under the red roof shingles.
“What I object to is having them fly up and down in my bedroom when I’ve got the light on and am trying to read,†Isabelle said.
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