THE LONG-EARED BAT 201 



but whether by accident or not " he was unable to ascertain. 

 One which he shot at this place had a small leaf of the silver- 

 fir in its mouth. 



Nowhere are these bats more in their element than when in 

 April the flowering sallows are the centre of a crowd of moths 

 attracted by the blooms. Round these Mr J. Steele Elliot^ 

 has watched them circling, and when moths attracted their 

 attention, they would steady themselves in their flight, and 

 with quivering wings (which sometimes gave him the impression 

 that they were perching), would seize their prey, frequently 

 from off the bloom itself. So, too, Mr William Jeffery^has 

 observed them taking moths off the blossoms, " the bat closing 

 its wings, folding down the ears, and making its meal there 

 and then without quitting the tree." The above description 

 represents the more normal habits of the species, but it is 

 nothing loth to catch its prey in full and open flight, gracefully 

 swooping upon the larger moths as Mr Peter Inchbald has 

 observed.^ 



The bats are wont to vary the activity of insect-hunting 

 by retirement with their prey to the seclusion of some barn or 

 outhouse, where the rejected wings of their victims falling to 

 the floor often betray their presence.* Mr O. V. Aplin ° 

 remarks that these retreats are not sleeping-places but merely 

 dining-halls, and in the neighbourhood of Banbury the 

 moths most extensively captured are the buff ermine,® yellow 

 underwing,^ and silver Y.^ Where no better dining-hall is 

 available, the bat is perforce content with such lowly sites 

 as a tree-trunk, where Mr J. Ffolliott Darling" has observed 

 one, after catching insects, sit munching a large moth so 

 vigorously that he could hear the crackling of the moth's 

 armour as it disappeared. 



Messrs Alcock and Moffat find that in County Wexford 

 the tree most frequently selected for a hunting-ground is 

 the ash, amongst the branches of which it may be seen 

 every evening from May to September. In early May they 



' Zoologist, 1897, 231. 2 ii,i^^ iggo, 71. 



' Field, 23rd July 1887, 149. * Lord Lilford, Zoologist, 1887, 66. 



* Zoologist, 1889,382. ° Spilosoma lubricipeda 



' Triphcena. ^ Plusia gamma. " Zoologist, 1883, 294. 



S 



