THE WHISKERED BAT 167 



briar, a thorn of which, despite its usual agility, it had evidently 

 failed to avoid. 



During its season of activity the Whiskered Bat chooses 

 varied situations for its diurnal resting-place, and, as a rule, 

 sleeps apart from its fellows. Holes in walls, in roofs of houses 

 and buildings, and the spaces behind shutters and sign-boards, 

 are its customary home. Less frequently, it resorts to some 

 convenient hole or crevice in a tree, or creeps behind a loose 

 piece of bark. Among more exceptional retreats may be 

 mentioned the ivy on a wall,^ an auger-hole in an old gate- 

 post,^ and a crevice between two boulders in a wood ; ^ one 

 has even been found asleep in bright sunlight on the top of 

 a stone wall.* During the summer months it rarely resorts 

 to caverns and similar situations, although Mr Oldham has 

 taken one near the entrance to an old mine-tunnel in June,^ 

 but in the winter such places are favourite hibernacula. 

 Messrs T. A. Coward and Oldham have frequently found it 

 at that season in disused copper-mines at Alderley Edge, 

 Cheshire, and in old lead workings in the Derbyshire dales, 

 places which are deserted in spring. Of Alderley they 

 write that: "The red sandstone rock is pierced in many 

 places by horizontal tunnels about six feet high and as much 

 in width. From November to March these tunnels are 

 resorted to by Whiskered, Long-eared, and, more rarely, 

 Daubenton's Bats, which hang suspended by their feet from 

 the roof and walls. We have found all three species in the 

 same tunnel, but they cannot be said to associate with one 

 another, and the individual bats are, with the rare exception of 

 the Long-eared, always solitary. At times a bat may be found 

 near the mouth of a tunnel where there is sufficient lisfht to see 

 it without a candle, but as a rule they retire to the deeper 

 recesses, sometimes more than a hundred yards from the tunnel 

 mouth, where they are in total darkness. For the most part 

 the tunnels are dry, but the bats sometimes hang in damp 

 places, and their fur then glistens with beads of water. It is 

 possible that they feed during their retirement, for, although 



' Zoologist^ 1874, 4128. - Tomes in BelL 



^ N. H. Alcock, Irish Naturalist, 1898, 272. 



■^ W. D, Roebuck, Naturalist, 1886, 113. ■'"' Zoologist, 1896, 255, 



