In the bat-caves with a camera

People are often surprised to discover that my first degree was in medieval history, rather than ecology. As it happens I'm also qualified to decode Morse code, carry out psychometric testing and chair legal tribunals, but none of these are relevant either and just show how my career wandered about before I found my forte! But the history of science can be an intriguing cross-over - how did our knowledge of bats and ecology arrive where it is now and who did the ground-work for us?

Back in 2009 I wrote a couple of articles on this subject: The 'diffusion of useful knowldge' and An 1892 bat-worker. I recently came across another article from 1898, written by T.A.Coward in a magazine called "Wide World", describing efforts by he and his friend MR R. Newstead of Chester to photograph bats in various British caves, at a time when photography hadn't progressed far from the formal staged photographs of the Victorian era.

Reading articles of this vintage can be startling at times. Back then natural history was not the conservation movement it now is. Much of the damage we are now desperately trying to repair had yet to be done to the natural world by the technological and chemical advances of the twentieth century and wildlife was seen as an abundant resource, to be drawn from freely in order to study it. Our modern views on the humane treatment of animals were also in their infancy. We have to grit our teeth and set these things aside if we want to listen to the voices of our forebears in the light of the world they lived in at the time.

Despite that, it's possible to see that many of the problems we face today were just as problematic to the Victorian natural historian:

"...the naturalist thinks little of experiences like these, and if his clothes are dirty and his hair is full of mud as he walks home, looking like a bricklayer's labourer, what does it matter...?"

That sounds like many a hibernaculum survey I have done. He goes one to remind us that he is talking from one and a quarter centuries ago when he continues...

"...if in his pocket he has his treasures, and when he arrives he will be able to examine or photograph his little friend the bat."

Oops. He also mentions a Daubenton's Bat he "had wounded", swimming itself to shore, which makes uncomfortable reading for us today, as does hearing that Coward:

"...once received a large number of these bats from the North of Scotland."

A powerful comparison with today can be seen, when he talks about gaining access to bats, to study them:

"We have found the best way to obtain them alive is to search for them in their native caves... We have scrambled about in the semi-darkness lit only by the guttering, greasy candles, our boots sticking in the wet clay..."

Hand-held bat detectors were almost a century away, let alone infra-red cameras. Even the electric torch was about twenty years away. Whatever we may think about taking bats home to photograph (whether dead or alive), there's no doubt that this was hard-core work! 

Newstead also took pictures of bats in situ in caves, though arguably the magnesium flares he had to use for illumination must have impacted on the poor subject bats. Nonetheless, it's exciting to see his photographs, which must surely be some of the earliest pictures of bats in their roosts. However, some of his portrait pictures are very definitely of dead and possibly taxidermied specimens!

I've written before about how weird occurances and bat-work seem to go hand-in-hand (Bat surveys - where odd stuff is normal, There's nowt so queer as folk and What is it about bat surveys?) It seems things was no different in 1898:

"...we entered an old lead working in Derbyshire, and just as we were striking a light (presumably to light a candle!) we were suddenly backed into by a cow that had been sheltering from the hot sun in the cool recesses of the cave."

Coward's love of bats might not always be apparent in his approach to studying them, but it certainly in in his prose:

"The Whiskered bat, a neat little fellow..."

"The Pipistrelle, or Flittermouse, is a pocket edition of the Noctule."

"Perhaps the quaintest of our commoner species is the Long-eared bat...as it turns its beady little eyes towards us, twitching its great ears, it seems to be asking who it is that is so rudely disturbing it."

Early naturalists like Coward and Newstead helped to build the early foundation towards an understanding of bats that we are still building and though their methods are alien to us today, we still owe them a debt. Coward wasn't shy of using his magazine article to address some anti-bat prejudices that seem very familar today:

"...wherever we go we are told stories of the "nasty things" flying in through windows, atttacted to sheets hanging up to dry, or getting entangled in ladies' hair. We only know they will never fly through windows, they never come when we hang up sheets and they take great care to keep away, not only from our heads, but well out of arms reach."

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The Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

Having a first degree in history I have always had an interest in how our understanding of bats has developed down the years (see "An 1892 bat-worker", January 2009). Today's post brought me a copy of "The Penny Magazine of the Society for the diffusion of useful knowledge", published on 7 January 1843.

My first thought was what a wonderful-sounding title and what a sign of the times that there existed a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The Victorian moneyed classes were incredible busy-bodies and loved trying to enhance people's lives, often in rather idiosyncratic ways. (Strangely, paying people enough to live on was rarely considered a way of enhancing lives!)

A regular feature of this paper is a series entitled "Curiosities of British Natural History" and this issue's feature is about bats. Sadly, the author's name is not given but it was either someone who knew the subject or who did a good deal of research as it contains several pages of detailed description of the subject.

Above the start is a gorgeous engraving, showing a Noctule, a Pipistrelle and a Long-eared Bat. The latter has a thoroughly cheesy grin on its face and the Noctule looks too portly to fly, but some of the anatomy is surprisingly detailed: presumably they were engraved from dead specimens.

The article begins with the enticing statement "It may surprise some of our readers to be informed that sixteen or seventeen distinct species of bats are natives of the British Isles". What?! That is our current understanding (depending on whether you include the Greater Mouse-eared or not). In 1843 the two Pipistrelles had not been separated, nor had Brandts and Whiskered Bats. The finding of Nathusius Pipistrelles in Britain was long in the future and, although it had been described elsewhere, I don't think the Grey Long-eared had been discovered in Britain at that time.


So what were the other four species? Unfortunately, the anonymous author doesn't tell us. In fact he only describes eight species, dismissing all the others as "extremely rare and restricted to certain localities". Was he guessing? Was he reading a foreign book and assuming the same species were here? Was he including some long-dismissed sub-species or perhaps bats found in part of the Empire? How frustrating!


The species he describes are: The Common Bat (Pipistrelle); The Great Bat (Noctule); The Long-eared Bat; The Barbastelle; The Reddish-grey Bat (Natterer's); the Whiskered Bat and the Greater and Lesser Horseshoe Bats. The obvious missing species is the Daubenton's, which must surely have been known at that time and would have been relatively easy to distinguish.

As with all writing of the era, wordsmithing was a priority and some of the descriptive text is fantastic: "Often during warm summer evenings have we seen numbers, perhaps several scores, of the Common Bat flitting over pools, in chase of gnats and similar insects, or gambolling with each other in a mazy dance, ever and anon uttering sharp shrill cries of exultation and delight..." The shill calls were presumably social calls, which are sometimes just within the range of human hearing. Incidentally, a score at that time was an innocent number twenty, in case you think the author was using dried bats for questionable purposes.


The piece includes a surprising amount of scientific detail, for example listing the species found to hibernate in caves as Natterer's, Whiskereds, Barbastelles and Long-eareds, though again Daubenton's are conspicuously absent (could it be they confused them with Natterer's at this time?). Given that this was a popular paper, not a scientific journal, there is a remarkable amount of detail: something today's press could learn from.


As with today's press however, the author just can't resist a lurid story and describes bats stealing bacon from chimneys and eating meat in larders. Not perhaps as daft as it sounds, in an era when bacon was hung in chimneys to cure and when meat was kept open in a larder. Houses would have been quite porous to bats at that time and I can imagine a stray Pipistrelle within a house, finding itself next to a joint of raw meat, having a nibble, possibly for the water content.


Something exciting about old texts like this is when they describe the location of bat roosts. The author mentions a Noctule roost under the eaves of Queen's College Cambridge and Greater Horseshoes occupying caves "at Clifton and in Kent's Hole, near Torquay". If anyone reading this lives in those areas, it would be fascinating to know if these sites are still occupied, 166 years later!


At the time this paper was produced, people were still grasping to understand how bats found their way in the dark, and, reading the author's description one gets a sense of his frustration: they knew there was something special about it, but couldn't quite put their finger on it:


"There is a singular property with which the bats is endowed, too remarkable and curious to be passed altogether unnoticed. The wings of these creatures consist, as we have seen, of a delicate and nearly naked membrane of vast amplitude considering the size of the body; but besides this, the nose is in some furnished with a membranous foliation, and in others the external membranous ears are enormously developed. Now these membranous tissues have their sensibility so high, that something like a new sense somehow accrues, as if in aid of that of sight. The modified impressions which the air in quiescence, or in motion, however slight, communicates; the tremulous jar of its currents, its temperature, the indescribable condition of such portions of air as are in contact with different bodies, are all apparently appreciated by the bat." So near, yet so far!


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An 1892 Bat-worker

As an ecologist whose first degree was in history, I have always had an interest in the development of natural history. I would love to have been one of those wealthy edwardian or victorian country parsons whose lives were devoted to natural history (whilst presumably paying a curate to take care of the religious stuff!) 

Last year I heard a talk about the use the Botanical Society of the British Isles makes of historical records in order to understand changes in the distribution of vascular plants. Some of their impressive database comes from the notebooks of victorian botanists and the voucher specimens they made, which are often still to be seen in herbaria. Other records are found by trawling old natural history books and drawing out biological records from descriptions of species and their distribution. 

Inspired by this I resolved to seek out any such data I could regarding bats in my part of Scotland. It took a while to find a suitable source of data: bats were not recorded anything like as much as vascular plants were, botany being a "suitable" occupation for those few Victorians and edwardians who had time to spare. However, I recently came across a copy of "The Mammalian Fauna of the Edinburgh District", written by William Evans in 1892. In it, Evans set out to record the distribution of mammals in Eastern Scotland between the Tay and the Tweed (a rather broad definition of "Edinburgh distict" by today's standards). He particularly wanted to record the distribution of bats and small mammals, as these were felt to be under-recorded at the time. Arguably then, Mr Evans was one of the first ever bat-workers in Scotland. 

There are some fascinating distinctions between the work of this dedicated natural historian and modern bat-work, but some remarkable parallels too. Not surprisingly, the methods used are utterly different and at times seem a little barbaric to a modern reader. In a day when bat detectors were still 6 or 7 decades away, the art of finding bats was focussed on roosts and upon seeing and catching bats in flight. Whereas today we consider it appropriate to make biological records based on seeing (or hearing) a bat and recording the salient characteristics, in an age when conservation was unheard of and probably unnecessary, the true scientist's voucher specimen was a dead animal. Evans described removing bats from roosts, catching them in flight using butterfly and fishing nets, plus some less savoury approaches. 

The Daubenton's Bat (then Vespertilio daubentoni, now Myotis daubentonii) seems to have come in for more of it's fair share of hasrh treatment: "During the summer of 1869 I observed a number of bats flitting above a still reach of the Esk above Penicuik, and one which I succeeded in striking down with a walking stick proved to be of this species." Three other specimens of this species were sent to him from the Dunbar area by a contact who, rather than battering them to death with a walking stick, chose the gentlemanly approach....and shot them! 

In another section Evans describes how impressed he was with the nimble flight of a Pipistrelle he watched, though his methods of evaluating this were a little rough by today's standards: "In June last I watched one for fully a quarter of an hour flying in the bright sunshine at Broomhall, near Dunfermline and was much struck with its activity and the facility with which it evaded stones and other missiles thrown at it." 

Lest you think too poorly of Evans, he also described caring for live bats (probably captures, rather than the sick and injured bats the modern bat-worker might deal with), in particular a Brown Long-eared Bat given to him by the gamekeeper at Dalkeith Country Park (where there is still a Brown Long-eared roost): "It delights in scrambling about the pictures, the window-blinds and even the chairs; and often settles on the floor, where it moves with considerable rapidity (indeed, it may almost be said to run), keeping the body practically clear of the ground. A more knowing little creature I have seldom seen; and, having discovered that there is sufficient space below the room-door for it to creep through, it's endeavours to overcome obstacles placed in the way of it's escape are most persistent and amusing." 

Aside from the very limited equipment Evans had available by modern standards, the victorian understanding of bat taxonomy was rather different. He describes there being 12 species of bat nationwide, whereas today we accept there are 16 or 17 (depending on your views about the Greater Mouse-eared bat's status in the British Isles). The most obvious difference is the Pipistrelle. We now know that there are three Pipistrelle species in the UK, whereas in Evan's day only one was known, the splitting of Common and Soprano Pipistrelles being still a century away. 

The most surprising thing about Evan's work and the thing for which he deserves to be remembered is the fact that, despite limited taxonomic understanding and huge limitations in method and equipment, compared with today, his description of the bat fauna of the area is remarkably in tune with what we know today. He described Brown Long-eareds as "by no means rare", Daubenton's Bats as "...locally at least, not uncommon" and Pipistrelles as "undoubtedly by far the most abundant and generally distributed." Ignoring the split of the Pipistrelle species, these three are the most abundant bat species in the region today. 

More impressive still is that he was remarkably accurate about the rarer species too. He described a record of Natterer's Bats from near Dalkeith (the two known roosts of that species in the Lothians today are in the Dalkeith area) and goes on to hypothesise that Whiskered Bats are likely to be present in the region too. They are, but there are only three modern records of them in the Lothians. In fact, his only shortfall was his failure to mention the Noctule, which we now know to be present in the Lothians. Whether they were present 117 years ago is a moot point, but it's only in the past decade that they have been identified in south east Scotland. Were they here in Evan's time? We'll never know. 

If you're interested in helping to put historical biological records to work, try visiting http://herbariaunited.org/atHome/ This project uses on-line volunteers to transfer information from thousands of old herbarium sheets onto a modern database. It's easy to do and rather addictive! 

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