About Bats

Bats are mammals with super-skills like echo-location, enabling them to zoom around at high speed in the dark. Their mysterious abilities have led to their reputation as scary creatures and there are many myths around bats which are completely untrue. There are no vampire bats in the UK – all of our native species feed on insects, so the more bats flying over your garden the less trouble you will have with midges. One bat can eat as many as 2000 in a night!

Little was known about bats until modern technology came along. New equipment that converts the high-frequency sounds of bat calls into sounds that human ears can hear, gives certainty to which species are calling or feeding.

Bat helpline

Bats are fully protected in UK law. They are harmless and need our protection.

If you find a bat, which may be sick or injured, please visit the Bat Conservation Trust website or ring their helpline 0345 1300 228.

In the UK bat droppings and urine contain no viruses, bacteria or fungi. If you have bats in your house, church or other building and would like to know more, you will find advice on the Bat Conservation Trust website, or please get in touch through our Contact Us page.

YACWAG Batmap Project

The YACWAG Batmap project aims to find out where our local bats roost, feed and fly. Members are encouraged to help with bat recording, surveying and the interpretation of results. Training and equipment is provided. 

The project received a Community Wildlife grant from Big Lottery Awards for All enabling the purchase of radio tracking equipment, Anabat recorders as well as maternity and hibernation roost bat boxes.

Our local bats

There are 18 species of bats in the UK, 17 of which breed here. The Yatton and Congresbury area is a bat hot-spot with 13 species to be found – 12 of which have been found in our Littlewood reserve. The internationally rare Greater Horseshoe bat is one of the highlights locally as the bats have an important maternity roost nearby in Brockley.

Our Local Bats:

     1.     Greater Horseshoe

     2.     Lesser Horseshoe

     3.     Serotine

     4.     Noctule

     5.     Daubentons

     6.     Natterers

     7.     Whiskered

     8.     Brandts

     9.     Common pipistrelle

     10. Soprano pipistrelle

     11. Nathusius pipistrelle

     12. Brown long-eared

     13. Leisler (historic record – no recent local record confirmed)

The discovery of Barbastelle bat and Bechsteins bat, both woodland specialists, in Kings Wood remains a distinct possibility. The Grey Long-eared bat has also been found in North Somerset but not locally at present. A ‘new’ species, the Alcathoe bat, was confirmed in the UK in 2009 and its presence in North Somerset may be a matter of time.

YACWAG manages its reserves to produce insects needed by bats, creating places for shelter. We have put up bat boxes so we can monitor bats and cleared, restored and created water-courses on our reserves. We also aim to encourage bigger, denser hedges to give shelter from the wind and predators. Hedges and trees also produce insects for food.

YACWAG monitors local planning applications. Many bat roosts and habitats have been lost to housing development within our area but we now comment on most damaging planning applications and raise awareness of the needs of bats. We also notify roosts and habitats and have put up hibernation boxes.

Our significant Bat monitoring milestones