A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



ponds, appearing to feed by preference on 

 insects close over still water. It comes 

 abroad quite late in the evening, some time 

 after the pipistrelle has made its appearance, 

 and may then be seen so close to the surface 

 of the water of some pond or still reach of 

 the river Avon that the reflection is undistin- 

 guishable from the creature itself. The diurnal 

 place of retirement is some old building, holes 

 in trees so far as I know never being chosen. 

 The belfry of the church at Stratford-on- 

 Avon was formerly much frequented by 

 this bat, and the late Sir W. H. Flower 

 and the present writer obtained specimens 

 there by swinging the bell ropes about just 

 when the bats came out of crevices and were 

 flying round the belfry. They were struck 

 by the ropes and came to the floor. Dau- 

 benton's bat may be distinguished from its 

 allies, Natterer's bat and the whiskered bat, 

 by its having the feet less fully enclosed in 

 the wing-membrane. 



9. Whiskered Bat. Myotis mystacinus, Leisler. 

 Bell — FespertUio mystacinuj. 

 There is no English bat which can more 

 properly be styled an arboreal species than the 

 present one, notwithstanding that it reposes 

 during the day in buildings. At the present 

 moment there is quite a large colony of whis- 

 kered bats in the roof of the house of the writer 

 at Littleton, from which place more than a 

 hundred were seen to emerge one evening in 

 July, I 899. They dropped out of a hole under 

 the slates either singly or in twos or threes, and 

 lost no time in getting into the top of a large 

 walnut tree, through which they passed, and 

 scattered oflF to other trees to feed amongst the 

 branches. The flight of this bat may be de- 

 scribed as quivering through and through the 

 branches and amongst the leaves. You rarely, 

 perhaps never, see a whiskered bat taking a 

 backward and forward beat in a sheltered cor- 

 ner, like the pipistrelle, the flight being almost 

 always in trees and generally high up. 



INSECTIVORA 



10. Hedgehog. Erinaceus europeeus, Linn. 

 The hedgehog is so well known in the 



county as to demand little notice. It is how- 

 ever becoming scarce in some parts of the 

 county, partly because it is killed wherever it 

 is met with, by labourers because it is supposed 

 to suck cows, by keepers because it is known 

 to suck eggs, and partly because under the 

 conditions of modern farming the old wide 

 hedges that used to furnish it with shelter are 

 being swept away. It has its regular hunting 

 ground and may be seen night after night to 

 go out along a particular track, occasionally it 

 travels a considerable distance. 



11. Mole. Talpa europcea, Linn. 



The abundance or the reverse of the mole 

 in any district depends entirely on the assi- 

 duity of the mole-catcher, for when trapping 

 is carried on industriously the creature is 

 soon quickly reduced in numbers. It is the 

 custom in some places in Worcestershire to 

 pay the mole-catcher a specified sum per acre 

 for its destruction. In the neighbourhood of 

 Bengworth two varieties of this animal were 

 at one time not infrequent, one of a pale 

 cream colour and the other, which was much 

 the rarer, of a dark ash colour. In the Vic- 

 toria Museum, Worcester, are specimens of 

 moles of various colours which have from 

 time to time been caught in different parts of 

 the county. 

 12. Common Shrew. Sorex aranem, Linn. 



A common and regularly distributed species 

 over the whole of the county. 



13. Pigmy Shrew. Sorex mtnutusy Pallas. 



Bell — Sorex pygmaui. 

 This very small creature is much less abun- 

 dant than the common shrew, to which it bears 

 considerable resemblance except in size. It 

 would be correct to say that for one instance 

 of its occurrence twenty of the common shrew 

 would be seen. It is found in the same sort 

 of situations which are frequented by the 

 common shrew. 



14. Water Shrew. Neomys fodiens, Pallas. 



Bell — Crossopus fodiens. 

 As its name implies, this is an aquatic 

 creature, and is almost always found in the 

 vicinity of water. The low-lying meadows 

 by the side of the Avon, Severn and Teme 

 are much frequented by the water shrew, and 

 they are sometimes discovered when the scythe 

 comes into use. Shallow rippling ditches and 

 rills as well as brooks are favourite haunts, 

 more especially such as have a gravelly bottom. 

 It is said, and with truth, to eat the spawn of 

 fish that it finds in such places, but it also 

 finds beneath the stones the small crustacean 

 Gammarus pulex, and the water shrew makes 

 use of its long snout to turn over the stones 

 and capture it. But such small creatures are 

 not the exclusive diet of the water shrew, the 

 present writer having once seen one escape from 

 the dried-up body of a barn-door fowl lying in 

 an outhouse. The shrew had eaten its way 

 into the interior through the abdomen. On 

 another occasion a common rat which had 

 been caught and killed by the jaws of a 



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