DAUBENTON'S, OR THE WATER BAT iji 



It does not appear that any study has ever been 

 attempted of the food of this species, but Mr Robert Service^ 

 believes that it feeds entirely on caddis flies. Judging from 

 the reluctance of captive specimens to attack large insects, 

 not excepting the succulent mealworm, Mr Arthur Whitaker 

 suggests that its ordinary food must be of minute size. Mr 

 Charles Oldham's experience is different, since he found that 

 both mealworms and large moths were accepted without the 

 slightest reluctance. The struggles of the former were over- 

 come without any difficulty, the bat being both bigger and 

 stronger than either the Whiskered or the Pipistrelle. Large 

 and powerful moths were, however, pouched with such prompt- 

 ness and efficiency as to suggest that insects of consider- 

 able size are occasionally at any rate captured under natural 

 conditions. 



During the day the Water Bat resorts indiscriminately to 

 buildings, trees, or caves, in which its habit is to congregate 

 in hanging clusters, somewhat like swarms of bees, but where 

 there are nooks or crannies in its retreat it wedges itself into 

 them on a system which can only be based upon the utmost 

 economy of space. These colonies, at least in summer, include 

 both sexes, as Mr J. G. Millais found to be the case in two 

 assemblages from which he received specimens in June. Mr 

 T. A. Coward, too, finds the summer colonies composed of both 

 sexes, young and old. It should be noted, however, that 

 five specimens taken by Mr H. Lyster Jameson,'^ on nth 

 July, in Bohoe Cave, Fermanagh, were all (perhaps only by a 

 coincidence) males. 



The diurnal retreats are often, but not necessarily, situated 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of water, and it is no doubt 

 for the convenience thus afforded that this bat loves districts 

 where the woods grow close to the water's edge. It does not 

 object to the companionship of other species, and J. R. 

 Kinahan' found it in company with the Pipistrelle in crevices 

 in Tankardstown Bridge, on the river Barrow, Ireland, in 

 1853. The stones at the entrance were so smooth and 



' Ann. Scott. Nat. Hist, 1896, 201. ^ Irish Naturalist, 1896, 94. 



' Proc. Dublin Nat. Hist. Soc, Dec. 9, 1853, reported in Nat. Hist. Review 

 (Dublin), i., 1854,23-25 ; Zoologist, 1853, 4012-401 3, 



