MINI MIGRATING FUZZ BALL

Per a BBC article, a bat travelled over six hundred miles, from England across the sea to Holland. The creature is quite utterly small, and such a journey is an incredible feat.

There are two ways of looking at this datum.

The alarmist paranoid panicky way: "Oh no, the invasion has begun! Run for your lives, aaaugh!" After screaming this balderdash, you start weeping like a teapartier, convinced that the bat will take away your gun.

The fairy-tale approach: "Oh hero bat! A famous Japanese animation artist needs to do a sensitive full-length feature about you! It will be heartwarming and poetic!"


When I was about ten or eleven years old, I started reading about bats.
I already knew that they were mammals ("creatures with a nipple thing"), and a very diverse set of species (over a thousand types), and I knew that most people were utterly terrified of them. But that wasn't what made them fascinating. It was seeing them flitting around at night, in the illumination zone of the streetlight on the Kerk Weg ("church road") that ran along our property. Holland is a very insect-rich country, what with being wet and temperate and fertile and all. There was plenty of food for insectivorous animals.

Plus it was a natural progression from mice and voles.
Start with Beatrix Potter at six, graduate to Wind in the Willows at eight, discover toads and forest frogs in Switzerland while on vacation, and before you know it, there are bats.

One of my mother's requisites for our vacation spots was that there should be a stream or brook there, and few or no other tourists. One can relax while soaking one's feet and rearranging rocks, or spend a summer afternoon reading in a quiet place where there is water and sun.
Switzerland meant aquatic creatures and upland pastures.

Switzerland at that time also had bats. They probably still do. Small winged fuzz balls flittering around street lights in the villages and above streams at twilight. Very nice.


THE LONG FLIGHT

The English bat mentioned in the BBC article is the Nathusius' Pipistrelle, a tiny vespertillionid. The body, including the tail, is about two inches, the wingspan no more than eight. When seen in flight, they may from a distance remind the observer of a butterfly, until what was silhouetted several yards away is distinguished at close range. They are a scarce presence, and among the most migratory of bats.

The night journey of the lone individual that went from England to Holland is an epic feat.

One can only wonder what it experienced, and what it thought of the newness.

A different place to roost, and other bats it did not know.

But such a nice wet smorgasbord!

So many bugs!



[Photo: D Hargreaves, British Conservation Trust]



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