FLUTTER Monty Don

Loves all animals. Except one. Here, he reveals why a certain small mammal sets his pulse racing in panic

verybody has a wildlife blind spot. Some cannot abide spiders – others, snakes. I have even heard that there are people who do not love dogs and that some are just not cat people. It seems incredible, but there are even people who fail to see the charms of a pig.

By and large, I love all animals. I am not spooked by snakes, can see the virtue of rats and don’t get fazed by wasps, hornets or moths banging into me as I read in bed on a warm September night. But I am chiroptophobic. I hate bats.

Well, not exactly hate. I have no objection at all to them as long as they stay well away from me. But I do hate the way they bomb me at dusk when I am working or walking in the garden, hate the way they swoop around outside the house, and really, really hate it when occasionally they fly inside.

I used to hate birds fluttering around the house but seem to have pretty much grown out of that – mainly through handling chickens and because it is so lovely having swallows flying in and out all summer long. So I suspect that my panicked reaction has to do with the bats’ zany flight and fluttering, rather than the thought of them as ugly mice borne on leathery wings. I find it hard not to think of them as anything other than slightly repulsive, but I know that bats do a huge amount of good, are fascinating and should be encouraged. I approve of them wholeheartedly – but would happily never see another bat again. However, we have lots of them in both garden and farm, so I am sure to see them daily between April and October for the rest of my life.

They are preyed upon – hobbies and tawny owls can and do catch them and anyone who has had a cat knows that sooner or later it will turn up with a bat. The only real danger to them comes from loss of habitat and insect prey rather than any predation. Only the great crested newt is as championed and protected as bats.

The one fact that everyone knows about bats is that they eat a huge quantity of insects. Some catch insects as small as midges, while others eat moths, beetles, craneflies and even flying ants. The pipistrelle – the smallest and commonest of our native bats – is reputed to eat up to 3,000 midges every night.

Many catch their prey in the air but some, like the lesser horseshoe bat or the natter’s bat, will pick prey off leaves and branches as they pass. Some, like the noctule, fly high, and others, such as horseshoe bats, fly low to the ground and even hunt from perches.

I know of these things but I cannot say that I go out of my way to observe them for myself. But I do like watching the noctules

flying on a summer’s evening like swifts, high in the sky and surprisingly straight and fast. And pipistrelles are so common with us that their flight paths, like the randomly waved tracery of a sparkler in the dark in a child’s hand, are part of the pattern of dusk. In fact, having watched pipistrelles in the garden here for more than 25 years, despite instinctively avoiding them, I cannot help but notice that they have set hunting grounds that are very local and specific, and that one or sometimes two bats will work them for 20 minutes at a time. Around the hop kiln is one, the mound another, the path up to the Paradise Garden a third. Obviously, this is due to the prevalence of insects at those places but it is interesting that those hunting grounds are so particular.

There are 18 species of British bat. I have a friend who has horseshoe bats in his cellar and another who had to accommodate – with a specially built dormer bat entrance – horseshoe bats in his attic. I have seen pipistrelles and noctules in the garden and pipistrelles and a barbastelle on the farm. The latter are very rare; we disturbed one that was roosting under a flap of bark on an old tree. Barbastelles like woodland near water and are only found in South Wales, Sussex and Devon.

I was leaning out of the bedroom window one lovely September morning as dawn rose, when two bats swooped in about an inch from my face and disappeared into the gap between the window and the frame. Given my feelings about bats, you may imagine I was not entirely happy about this. But I accept that we share our home and outbuildings with them, and probably the woods, too. Having them in the garden is entirely a good thing, and the surest way of encouraging them is to make life good for your insect population. Also, bats will be drawn to water, partly because of the way it attracts insects but also because they need to drink, so a pond will always encourage them to any garden.

I remember, when filming Around the World in 80 Gardens, going down a side tributary of the Amazon in a motorised canoe as dusk fell. Suddenly, out of the trees that flanked either side of this river – tiny by Amazonian standards but about the width of the Thames as it goes through Westminster – thousands of bats streamed out over the water, criss-crossing back and forth as they hunted. They had large, sharply pointed wings – bigger than any British bat – and for about 40 minutes, they flew around and among us. On the one hand, this was my worst nightmare, but on the other, it was fascinating: I had no choice but to give in to the experience and try to relish it.

Natural Year

My Garden World – the