NATTERER'S BAT 183 



Natterer's Bat is as sociable and gregarious as the Whisk- 

 ered Bat was formerly reputed solitary. It is often abundant 

 in wooded localities, where it haunts, usually with slow and 

 steady flight at no great altitude, the open spaces amongst the 

 trees or the neighbourhood of old gardens. By day it retreats 

 to holes in walls ^ or trees,^ or to caverns, and in the latter 

 is often found in company with other species, such as the 

 Whiskered and Long-eared Bats, with which it will even share 

 the same crevice.* The recesses of caves are, however, more 

 favoured for purposes of winter hibernation than for the briefer 

 retirements of summer. Occasionally it breaks its rule by 

 hanging alone in hibernation. 



A favourite winter resort is Mr Heatley Noble's cavern 

 near Henley-on-Thames. Here it was found numerously in 

 company with other bats on 14th February 1906. By the 

 15th of the following month, however, all except four, and 

 they, strange to say, numbering as many species as individuals, 

 had departed, and by the 25th of the same month, only one, 

 a Daubenton's, remained.* Hibernation is, therefore, not 

 more profound than in other species, and in South Wales, 

 Mr T. W. Proger has known this bat to fly abroad for its 

 food in February. 



The late R. F. Tomes graphically described for Bell's work 

 a colony of these bats which he discovered in 1848 in the 

 church of the village of Arrow, near Alcester. " Between the 

 ceiling of the church and the tiled roof was a dark retreat, 

 accessible by a low arch from a floor in the tower. Here the 

 Bats were seen adhering, by all their extremities, to the under 

 surface of the row of tiles which forms the crest or ridge of the 

 roof (partly supported, however, by the upper tier of roof-tiles 

 on which the ridge-tiles rested), and others clinging to them, 

 until a mass was made up three or four inches thick, six or 

 seven wide, and about four feet in length. It would be wrong 

 to call this their place of repose, as they presented a most 

 singular scene of activity, the constant endeavour of those 



' Alfred Newton, Zoologist, 1853, 3804 ; J. Backhouse, iUd., 1898, 493. 



2 William Borrer, ibid., 1874, 4127. 



^ Joseph Armitage, Naturalist, 1900, 114, and other references. 



* A. H. Cocks, Zoologist, 1906, 186-187. 



