“It’s transformed what I can do,” Sam says. She finishes
feeding her newborn, pulls on a pair of cotton gloves,
then oh-so-gently lifts out a minuscule bat. “This is a
common pipistrelle. You can tell by its dark bandit mask
and black ‘tights’. Soprano pipistrelles have tawny fur
and a paler face.”MEAL TIME
Picking up a mealworm, Sam squeezes it to force out
the innards, like toothpaste from a tube, and proffers it.
The bat half nibbles, half sucks its gooey meal, revealing
needle-like teeth. Sam holds up another grub, then fondly
gives the baby a drink of water through a micropipette
(younger ones receive goat’s milk, which bats digest
well). She returns the baby to the snug incubator and
repeats the procedure with the other pups. “If they’re on
track, their forearms should grow 1mm a day,” she says.
Tending to bats is hard work. The problem is their
diet: live invertebrates. One study found that a single
n consume 3,000 midges a night. Sam
li es this with mealworms and larger morio
w beetle larvae sold as food for wild birds and
les). Occasionally, she offers crickets or
c k ches to the bigger bats such as noctules,
ines and Leisler’s.
S nce bats naturally catch prey in mid-air or, inNico the noctule
“Nico rules the roost,” Samantha Pickering laughs. One of her long-term
residents kept under licence, Nico arrived in 2014 after suffering brain
damage when his roost – an old telegraph pole – was taken down. He
lives permanently at North Devon Bat Care. Though he can’t be released,
he leads an active life as an “education bat” – Sam briefly brings him out
at the end of her talks (above). Some people are wary at first, but he is
invariably a big hit. “Nico’s a showman,” Sam says. “He squeaks every
time he gets his food and the children love that.”CLOCKWISE
FROM ABOVE: a
brown long-eared
bat in Sam’s
flight cage; the
same bat has
a test flight; a
Natterer’s bat;
Nico the noctule
wows the crowds
at an outreach
event; Nico in
close-uppipistrelle can
replicate
worms (
pet repti
cockroac
serotin
SinNATURE