Fuddland

A short project on capturing the ultimate photo of the bats that flitted through my garden during the summer of 2005.

This category is a subcategory of Local News.

I’m fast running out of bat-based puns for these entry titles.

Patience is a virtue…

I’m not sure if it’s because of the new night lights in the back garden, or because it’s the time of year, or because they’ve just moved into the area, or because I’ve just never noticed them before, but for the last week or two, around the same time every night, I’ve been treated to the sight of some bats looping around the garden.

There’s a definite pattern: around nine-thirty or ten o’clock, when it’s just dark enough for the sensors on the night lights to turn them on, and for about fifteen minutes, two or three bats do a circuit which encompasses my garden and those of the adjacent houses, catching the moths and other bugs which are flitting around, before heading off elsewhere.

Last night I decided I’d see if I could manage to get a snapshot of one, but I knew I was up against it because,

• they move pretty quickly

• they’re quite small

• it’s dark

Not ideal photography conditions! In fact, the very first shot out of the eight that I took is the only one in which a bat appears, and even then it’s not the best capture, although it’s definitely a bat [I promise I haven’t just superimposed a low-quality bat photo onto a picture of a hedge].

As well as figuring out a better way to take a photo of them [I think my camera battery could do with a charge so that the flash is at its fastest and brightest], I’m hoping to somehow identify what type of bat it is. I’d estimate their wingspan to be about seven or eight inches. Any experts out there?