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NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 



The Flight-time of the Noctule (Pterygistes noctula). — In a paper 

 dealing with the habits of the Noctule (Zool. 1901, pp. 51-59), I 

 expressed an opinion that the period of activity in this species is 

 limited to a vespertinal flight of from one to two hours. From this 

 opinion my friend Mr. J. Steele-Elliott (torn. cit. p. 153) and others 

 dissented at the time, and more recently Mr. C. B. Moffat, in his inter- 

 esting paper entitled " The Duration of Flight among Bats " ('Irish 

 Naturalist,' 1905, pp. 97-108), arguing from the analogy of the 

 closely allied Leisler's Bat and from his own limited experience of the 

 Noctule, has also shown that I was wrong. Although it is beyond 

 question that the Noctule has a matutinal flight, Mr. Moffat's observa- 

 tions, as well as my own, suggest that fewer individuals are abroad at 

 dawn than in the evening twilight. I do not know of any precise 

 observations on the time of the Noctule' s exit and return in the early 

 morning, or of the duration of the morning flight, and give my own 

 experience with some diffidence, as it is limited to a single occasion. 

 The Noctule abounds in the wooded Cheshire Plain, but, as its dens 

 are usually high up in the branches of trees, it is obviously impossible 

 in most cases to observe the Bats, even in bright moonlight, as they 

 return from their evening flight, or leave the hole again in the early 

 morning, and nothing can be done unless one is so fortunate as to find 

 a den in a trunk or leafless branch which shows clearly against the 

 sky, and is at the same time at no great height. A den about twenty 

 feet from the ground, in a dead limb of a beech in Oulton Park, near 

 Tarporley, furnished a fairly good subject for observation on the moon- 

 light night of May 20th. When I reached the place at 7.40 the Bats 

 were squeaking in the den, and continued to do so at intervals until 

 8.25 (eighteen minutes after sunset), when four left the hole in rapid 

 succession, followed a few seconds later by four more, and then by two. 

 None was heard nor seen until 9.24 (seventy-seven minutes after sun- 

 set), when one returned and dashed round the tree and among the dead 

 branches. During the next twelve minutes others followed, though it 

 was impossible to tell how many, and there was intermittent squeaking 



