General News
12 September, 2025
BARRY'S CORNER: Bats are biodiversity
Micro bats are a vital part of a district to help keep the insects under control. The bats of the Wimmera are all insect eaters that are caught while the bat is flying at night.
Some bats live in colonies in hollow trees or protected areas such as caves where there are often hundreds of thousands of the animals suspended from the ceiling upside down.
While some species of bats live solitary in hollow trees, even with nesting birds using the same hollow for roosting.
Some people tell me there are no bats in their district because they never see any.
These bats only move at night after emerging from such a hollow.
In the more cleared farm paddocks protection can be hard to find so the bats seek shelter under the bark of trees and hollow fence posts and dark spots in a quiet place.
They rarely roost on the ground even under heavy leaves and bark.
If you have good working ears it is sometimes possible to pick up a bat echo sounding call.
This acts like a radar where the bat uses its ears as antennae it can be heard as a fine click and allows the mobile animal to locate any flying insects.
The echo sounder locks onto the insect and it can be swept up by the bat by the loose skin between the bones of hands acting like a net, then it can be eaten while flying.
In this way a bat can eat up to at least half of its body in weight each night. Insects are not as prolific during the cooler months of the season so the bats are mostly summer active to match the food source.
Nearly all bats use this echo sounding skill but the calls are so high pitched most cannot be heard by the human ear.
There are detectors designed to catch the calls and identify the species but they are not cheap and unless you are a tech head they can be complicated.
However the technology is improving all the time and eventually will be user friendly.
Because bats consume vast quantities of insects they really are useful to have around any farm or garden.
Coming into the mossie and fly seasons should spur us on to make sure we protect the creatures of the bat family, Bats are not dangerous.