A bit about bats

Recently a talk about Microbats was given Anna McConville at the Lake Macquarie Landcare Super Saturday Session.

Microbats are more common than you think. There are 23 microbat species in the Lower Hunter with five local threatened varieties. Many are no bigger than your thumb, they have small eyes and all of them use echolocation (hearing) to find their favourite food, insects, especially mosquitoes.

Unlike the Megabats, such as the Flying Foxes, who use their superb night vision, feed on nectar and pollen and have a wing span of up to 1.2m you would hardly notice a microbat.

Microbats are hollow-roosting, mossie-munching mammals that can eat up to 50% of their body weight each night. They will shimmy under bark, congregate in caves, tuck into tunnels, and cozy up in culverts. Being so small they only need small spaces to snuggle into which is why loose bark, hollow logs and branches are needed for their survival.

There are several different types of microbats.

• Gleaning microbats are slow fluttering flyers who pluck their food on the wing.
• Free-tailed microbats are swift fliers who like the wide, open spaces.
• Forest bats are the smallest and fly around the branches and canopies of trees eating mosquitoes, flies and moths.
• Gould’s Wattled Bat is the most common and likes the forest edges.
• Fishing bats skim the still water surface for aquatic insects.
• Bent-Wing Bats can fly up to 10km a night and are a Threatened Species
• Greater broad-nosed bats are a larger beetle eating microbat which is also threatened.

Microbats can best be seen at dusk and are often mistaken for small birds. The only one that you are likely to hear is the White-Stripe Freetail bat whose cicada like cheap is within the audible range of humans.

There will be an opportunity to search for Microbats a little later this year on the community spotlighting events and as part of the Bioblitz event in September.

There are lots of interesting fact sheets available from the Australasian Bat Society covering topics such as

• Bats in your belfry? What to do if you find bats in your house

• Boxes for Bats: Information about roosting boxes

• Tree pruning and bats: things to consider before you lop the branches