| Wanted - Tree Hollows, Dead or Alive The kitchen window opened onto the veranda. It had been covered with a flywire screen. I removed the screen in the hope that I could rescue the tiny creature trapped behind, sandwiched between glass-pane and the wire. The tiny claws holding the body clasped to the screen clung fiercely but lifelessly. I carefully took it off the wire and cupped it in the palm of my hand. From the tips of oversized ears to the base of its tail membrane, it was less than 8 centimetres. The ears and tail had a delicate translucency. The body was walnut-shaped and the fur on its belly was a lighter brown that on its back. The extended arms like the spokes of an umbrella held the membranes of the wings furled. The dry, hot air of the Riverina summer had perfectly preserved this Microbat. Our thoughts about bats are forged from European experience and mythology. Bats have a fearsome reputation. We think in terms of blood-sucking vampires and this closes our minds to the uniqueness of our native bats. In a land where most mammals are marsupials and where ungulates and chimps do not naturally exist, bats and rats are our only native placental mammals. We know a little about flying foxes. The disperse rainforest seed. However, they also eat cultivated fruit when blossom and native fruits are scarce and my brother-in-law, an orchardist, used to shoot them. We know less about Microbats which are widely dispersed and which could be considered a friend to the farmer and gardener. Why? Because in one night a Microbat can eat up to half of its bodyweight in insects like beetles, moths and locusts. Some species can prey on insects at ground but most use echo location to hunt insects in flight. My small dead specimen was identified as a Greater Long Eared Bat but it could as easily have been a Little Forest Bat or a Goulds Wattled Bat or a Lesser Long Eared Bat. All are Micro bats. All live in woodlands and farmlands over most of the south eastern part of Australia. Some are long-lived - up to 20 years - if they do not meet with death from an unlucky choice of roost. Microbats have the ability to control metabolism. In flight, the heart rate can rise from 400 to 1000 beats per minute. At rest, it can be less than 40 beats per minute. A Micro bat can slow its metabolism in a process akin to hibernation known as ‘torpor’. It is unlikely that my tiny dead bat lived in a colony. It preferred more than one roost site. Colonies only form in habitats such as the Deniliquin State Forest with its red gums offering a multitude of roots. It would have selected a site under house eaves or in an old fence post with a split about the body-size of a micro bat, or under the bark of a paperbark or, better still, in the hollow of an old tree which had been left if a paddock or on a roadside as remnant vegetation. Its presence would be undetected because it is a tiny creature and deeps the company of night owls. A decline in insect pests may be the only flag to its presence. It conceives in spring and gives birth in summer when insects are plentiful. I pity the maternal bats as they give birth upside-down and must catch their babies in the folds of their winged membranes and pull them up to suckle. A dropped catch means certain death. Each successful birth is cause celebré because Nature is wonderful in its diversity and the microbats are becoming rare. So I will keep my little specimen tucked away in a disused Avon box in the hope that the Greater Long Eared Bat never becomes extinct. |
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Margaret Simpsom
©2003 |
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