Created April 2009
Last updated April 2018
Barbastellus barbastellus (Schreber 1774)
Photo Bob Cornes
Photo Bob Cornes
Barbastelles are unique amongst British bats in that their ears join at the top of their head. They have a large triangular tragus. They weigh 6 to 8 g. Their dorsal fur is black brown and may have a frosted appearance. Their ventral fur is grey . Their body is between 45 and 55mm in length. they have been known to live for more than 20 years.
Their eyes are set near their ears and can be difficult to make out. Some people say they are ugly bats and describe them a “pug faced”. We will not hear of it.
It is said they derive their name from the Italian for Star beard and the bat in the top photo certainly have shaggy fur under her chin.
Barbastelles have a very distinctive call , once heard never forgotten
Photo Bob Cornes
They are fast, agile flyers and specialist foragers in a range of habitats, swooping to drink from ponds or lakes. The ones we have found have mainly been in an area with a good understorey
They emerge from their roosts early and will feed close to home before setting off on long fights to other feeding grounds. We have tracked individuals flying over 5 km to feed. Each member of the colony has its own feeding territory .
They will often change roosts every few days, They usually roost in loose bark peeling off trees. Such roosts are often short-lived and a major consideration n managing woodlands for barbastelles is making sure there is an ongoing supply of trees with lifting bark.
In summer they often emerge early from their daytime roosts to forage in the dark zone amongst trees until open area light levels have fallen to those existing under tree canopies; then they may forage in quite open areas, and will frequently cross fields once night has fallen.
We now have records of barbastelle throughout the county, though the population density is low.
Photo Toby Thorne
These rare bats have been an obsession for the bat group for a number of years since we helped the Cambridgeshire bat group look for roosts at Wimpole. Since then we have located a number of roosts of our own following a mist netting and radiotagging programme
Read the article we wrote for the Bedfordshire Natural History Society about the2005 2005 Barbastelle Radiotracking (BNHS)
The barbastelle is a UK Biologial Diversity Action Plan Species. for more information visit http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=5155.
We first found barbastelles during hibernation checks, but it was a long time before we found them roosting. They are not always easy to spot as they hide deep in cracks. Sometimes we do find them on the surface
Photo Danuel Hargreaves
We find more barbastelles than almost anywhere else in the country, but we can’t begin to match the numbers found in Polish hibernacula.
In 2005 we started working with the North Bucks Bat Group looking for, and finding, barbastelles on the Bucks/Beds border and in Beds itself.
In 2006 we mistnetted some barbastelles in the north-west of the county but did not radiotrack them. The hunt is not over, but we got sidetracked into searching for serotines.
In 2009 we caught several males in mist nets and found an autumn swarming site which included Barbastelles in the swarm.
In 2011 we found two more woods with barbastelles in them but were unable to catch the females we wanted to radiotrack,
I 2017 we helped the Herts and Middlesx Bat Group on their successful quest to find barbastelles
More information
For a barbastelle quest of your own, follow these links :
http://www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/bats/britishbats/index.htm