Chapter Four

Grey Long-eared Bat

I read somewhere that a common misconception about a tree’s root system is that it mirrors the trunk and branches above. In reality, roots are surprisingly shallow, dominating only the upper 60 centimetres of soil, instead opting for a widespread approach – fingers in lots of pies. I understand. Something about Devon’s sandy, pebbled and clay soils has allowed my own roots to grow far and wide. I’d like to keep it that way.

For trees, their health depends on various conditions, various elements. And for me, regular raids along the South West Coast Path, England’s longest continuous footpath (spanning 630 miles), offer a unique elemental hit – tapping my roots in a little deeper. Two 300-mile hikes along the Devon and Cornwall coastlines bookended my early 20s. Four-season sunrises and sunsets have taken me hostage many times. Weekend snoozing and gossiping among thrift on the headland with my mum – ‘our headland’, we call it – permeates the summer albums. All manner of trivial frustrations, laughter without cause and raw contentment have been released onto this trail over the years, and I’ve found it a better listener than most. My dad tells me, ‘The best views are often behind you.’ But standing on the track I know so well, with a blue-and-copper-coloured Atlantic waving me forwards and a bee investigating my purple top – I begged to differ.

It was late July, and I had recently returned from Wales. Screens had swiftly replaced seagrass meadows, and I knew my next adventure would play out on home turf. To be honest, I revelled in its less chaotic itinerary. My original plans included being ever so adventurous and sea-kayaking the route, paddling parallel to the coast path. However, large swells and unpredictable currents led a coastguard friend of mine to advise against such absurdities. So, I did what I knew best and pulled on my boots. To share the experience, my friends Harriet and Briony joined me for the day. We met while working in the local outdoors shop together a few years ago and quickly decided to socialise beyond the stock room with immediate effect. The truth is, I’ve found it hard to discover women my age who consider a decent hike along a shapely section of Jurassic Coast a ‘good time’. These girls are a rare (but not endangered) breed.

On the whole, there remains a significant difference between going for ‘a walk’ and going for ‘a walk’, if you know what I mean. But here were three such humans, booted and backpacked, ready to go. Whether my friends were keen to stick around into the night for a bat that almost guarantees a no-show was unlikely, but it was summer and the day was ours.

We were heading for Seaton, 20 kilometres east of our starting point above Otterton. Conger Pool, Sandy Cove, Little and Big Picket Rock, Tortoiseshell Rocks and Chit Rocks are stationed like stepping stones en route. Awkwardly nestled between charming Beer and historic Lyme Regis, Seaton is a seaside town that, bless its heart, has tried and failed. The plain middle child. My old secondary school is nearby, and despite the nearby (*excellent) Seaton Wetlands, unusual flora and wading birds were not on the agenda in my late teens. Instead, the day a Tesco Extra arrived complete with a Costa was the end to any productivity in our free periods. Seaton became our forgivable concrete escape – and after all this time, I was looking forward to the rendezvous.

Although Harriet and Briony were competent walkers themselves, I decided not to fully reveal the ‘challenging to severe to strenuous’ rating of the walk to them. The days leading up to the hike had been sweltering. Our hike hadn’t even begun, and already the humidity had risen to a crescendo before settling over our heads in a pregnant cloud. With the total absence of wind, we were hot, sticky, but excited to be out together. Resuming outings with friends was a bizarre novelty following four months of social restrictions across the UK.1 Ladram Bay lay ahead of us; its iconic red sandstone stacks a gateway to the caravan park that sprawls inland. A few posh houses sensibly hid behind a screen of Scots pine. Hundreds of boot prints dimpled the track, skirting around molehills and cowpats. Many others had been here before us, this section of the path between Otterton and Sidmouth being as popular as tea in a crisis.

I often forget that the Jurassic Coast is a UNESCO2 World Heritage Site, meaning its stablemates include: the Great Barrier Reef, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. Oh, and the Tower of London. Hey, who knew that the UK has 32 of these?! Thirty-two areas oozing with ‘cultural and natural heritage … of outstanding interest … to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind’. I’ll certainly bear that in mind, then, next time I’m in someone’s armpit on the Circle Line en route to said Tower of London. But stand with hands on hips atop the Jurassic Coast’s High Peak, and it takes but a few seconds to justify such an accolade. At 157 metres above sea level, on a clear day, it’s possible to see the Jurassic Coast in its near-entirety. Had we been walking towards Dover around 450,000 years ago, I may have chosen a 20-mile wander across an icy chalk ridge to Calais for a croissant instead.

The unearthing of flint hand axes and Neolithic pottery shards on the Jurassic Coast revealed two periods where High Peak was significant to our ancestors: in the Stone Age (around 4,000bc to 2,000bc), and then again in the interim between the Roman retreat from Britain and the West Saxon occupation of Devon (roughly between 400ad and 700ad). I wonder, will our generation’s archives preserved in ‘the cloud’ be as interesting to dissect? Or will it just be: ‘What I Ate: a series’?

The Jurassic coastline officially begins in Exmouth (tried, failed, tried harder, and now rapidly improving seaside town) and celebrates a 95-mile geological banquet of coastline, before ending at Old Harry Rocks, near Swanage, in Dorset. This coastline remains England’s only natural World Heritage Site. Safe to say, walking across its cliffs feels (at times) like you are gatecrashing the most outrageous film set. I half expected someone to shout ‘CUUUT!’ at any moment.

Three huge chapters of Earth’s biography are crammed into these 95 miles. A stuffed crust, so to speak, that is easily more than 250 million years old, yet far from stale; stretched and baked into deserts during the Triassic Period, around 252 million years ago. This blazing, sandy time marked the beginning of Earth’s ‘Middle Age’, as well as the dawn of the giants that pervade our wildest glances into the past. For this Mesozoic Era was also the ‘age of dinosaurs’. A few million years later, sea levels rose, and the desert upgraded into a tropical sea during the Jurassic period. Closer still and the Cretaceous period cycled through sea levels, buried and stored forests, tilted rock layers in favour of the east and eroded the west before finally assembling the sandstone and chalk we see today.

The rockfalls and landslides that often headline the news around here continue to reveal the life that lived on these ancient lands. Mary Anning’s humble curiosities transformed fossil-hunting from humanity’s diversion into a great global excursion. Born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, young Mary took to beachcombing, hoping to sell trinkets to boost the family’s poor living conditions. At the time, the Napoleonic Wars were heating up, Jane Austen had just finished Sense and Sensibility, and the ‘theory of extinction’ had only just been introduced. Assisting her father in fossil-collecting was a most unseemly pastime for a Georgian girl, but Mary had a bit of a knack for it. A 5.2-metre-long skeleton of a marine reptile (an ichthyosaur, ‘fish lizard’) and a complete skeleton of a plesiosaur (another dizzyingly large marine reptile) are among her most astonishing discoveries. Dying of breast cancer aged just 47, Anning’s was a short life devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. Her legacy is still revered to this day and she advanced our understanding of the Mesozoic, probably more than any other individual.

Back on the coast path, we were making quick progress. Herring gulls rode the breeze, cruising at our level, the syntax of their muscular bodies suddenly making sense away from the bins and flustered picnickers on the nearby promenades. We ascended Peak Hill, which levelled at the borders of Mutter’s Moor, an area of busy heathland offering one of the best views in England: a quilt of farmland sprinkled with sheep, stitched by villages, church spires resting among enormous nests of bracken, woodland and pebblebed heaths. With good visibility, you can easily see the crest of Haytor rising on the swells of Dartmoor. Gorse bushes were strung with their flowers like Christmas lights. The sea, as ever, at the cusp of it all.

Every time I come here, I recall a moment during a family walk many years ago when we shared this view with a man and his dog. Only when the man asked if we would be kind enough to describe it to him did we realise he was blind. Six-year-old me was confused at how someone who could not see could still so clearly appreciate the beauty of a landscape. But time has taught me that, when outdoors, we simply have to close our eyes to remember that sight is only a fifth of a feeling. Given a chance, our other senses are more than willing to chip in and fill the edges. I’m still sure that the man saw more than we ever did in that moment.

During 2019, I was involved with a conservation project called Back from the Brink – a collaborative initiative involving several organisations. In a spectacular pool of resources and people power, more than 4,000 volunteers across 19 concurrent projects shift vital gears. Site surveys, monitoring, public, landowner and local council engagement – Back from the Brink champions an agile approach and demonstrates the connectivity it hopes to restore. Target species range from the willow tit (the UK’s most threatened resident bird), narrow-headed ant (exactly as it sounds), to the grey long-eared bat (keep reading). And it was delving into the private life of this grey long-eared bat (Plecotus austriacus simply rolls off the tongue, does it not?) – the bat that disobeys evolution as it whispers across vanishing meadows – that made me want to hike 20 kilometres on a boiling July day in the hope of seeing it again. I’m bothered that 97 per cent of the unimproved grasslands (AKA wildflower meadows) over which they like to hunt have disappeared since the Second World War. But, luckily for me, Devon remains a bit of a pivot-point for several species of bat, as remnants of this habitat linger in the shadows.

I had arranged to meet Craig Dunton again, lead bat project officer for Back from the Brink and Bat Conservation Trust (BCT). On the whole, summer is a crucial time for bats, as pups are born and command the feeding frenzy. It’s the best time to try to see them, actually. They are more visible around the countryside between April and October while they rear their young before they retreat to hibernate overwinter in caves, cellars, disused mines, and such. Craig had planned to revisit and survey a farm near Axminster, home to one of England’s remaining eight known maternity roosts3 of grey long-eared bat. I fancied myself a bit of this, and on my calendar, I had marked that evening: Meet Batman. Become Robin. Find bats.

Before we go further, I just want to be clear: we humans have an appalling relationship with bats. The bat’s reputation has not aged well. Yes, we rightly connect bats with the dark, but because society has taught us to fear the dreaded night, any regard often ends there – and it has been this way for some time.

From around 100bc until the present day, the vocabulary we choose to refer to these animals seems as limited as our understanding: ‘disease’, ‘vampires’, ‘blood-suckers’, ‘demon’, ‘death’, ‘hell’. Ancient clay statues haven’t exactly helped. Some dating back to 300ad in Central America depict ‘Death Bat’, a human-sized vampire bat, the demon of the underworld, as he resides in his blood-soaked cave with his demonic army. Dear Aesop and his fable The Birds, the Beast and the Bat taught readers to reject and misplace bats as nothing more than an anomaly – ‘He that is neither one thing nor the other … being both bird and beast.’ Slavic folklore provoked believers to associate bats as dooming corpses to a satanic vampire afterlife. And, lest we forget, there was Bram Stoker’s Dracula – the blood-thirsty aristocratic projection of Victorian anxieties. Closer to home, millennial vampire fiction tempts viewers to desire, sexualise and fear immortality. We’re asked to crave and detest the supernatural and animalistic, all in the same breath. The only paradox I see is our famine of sight. Blind as a bat? Hun, please. More like blind as a human.

But not every culture holds bats in such low esteem. Where Western nations primarily see fear and superstition, China sees happiness and good fortune. Chinese artists have depicted the ‘five blessings’ of health, long life, prosperity, love of virtue and natural death – each as a bat. Bats, of course, are well known to science and society as vectors of deadly viruses – but again, hold that thought if you can. The negative bias many of us harbour is essentially a choice with which we have become comfortable. We borrow the traits we need for fancy-dress, and apart from an occasional pop-culture article celebrating a bat’s fascinating biology, it’s a real pity.

As a group of animals, bats have outlived people around 250 times over, Earth being their rightful pad for more than 50 million years. Around 1,400 bat species have emerged during that time, making bats the second largest group of mammals after rodents, comprising about 20 per cent of all mammals. It’s easy to overlook that bats remain the only mammal that has evolved full flight, already achieving what we never will. Sure, flying squirrels take to the air, but only for short glides between trees. And sharing more DNA with horses and dogs than with mice, bats render the ‘flying mouse’ idiom delightfully obsolete. We, too, have a place in that vast family tree alongside bats. Teeth, fur, and breasts that lactate in response to the hunger of live young comprise a mere fraction of our mutual code.

Bats form the group known as Chiroptera – a Greek word translating to ‘hand-wing’. My friends, mammals taking to the air is part of the same glorious conundrum that put whales into the sea, gave dinosaurs feathers and drew them to our bird feeders. In the spirit of Mary Anning and her beachcombing, 50-million-year-old wisps of bone and teeth have tumbled into the bat fossil record around the world. Still shrouded in quintessential mystery, it appears bats evolved to glide before full, flapping flight – every millennium allowing an extra window of membrane to lift them higher into the sky.

It’s only natural that a group of animals so numerous would come in all shapes and sizes. One only has to take the midnight train from Bristol Temple Meads station to draw parallels with our species. The wingspan of bats ranges from 140 millimetres to more than 1.5 metres. Most eat insects; some eat fruit or nectar. Others prefer a little bit of everything. Wikipedia tells us the grey long-eared bat veers on the large side. Granted, its huge ears and taut, furry abdomen give it a full-bodied, robust appeal. Like a fine wine, perhaps?

We have another species of long-eared bat in British skies – the brown long-eared variety. Although both are known, rather wonderfully, as the ‘whispering bats’ (we’ll get into this), a couple of crucial distinctions are important to note. Craig (our certified Batman) spoke of the stark differences between the numbers of each species – there being around 1,000 grey long-eared bats to 900,000 brown long-eared bats in Britain. He also mentioned how much their range varies, with browns found right up into Scotland and generally being the more adaptable of the two. Put simply, the grey long-eared bat is pretty much as rare as you can get. Being a southern European species with the most decent populations on Spain and Portugal’s Iberian Peninsula, the tiny numbers that remain in the UK are particularly tentative, as our shores define the very northern edge of its range.

With this in mind, grey long-eared bats have all the usual paperwork: officially ‘protected’ in the UK under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act and a European protected species. Long-lived for a mammal of their size, it’s not unusual for some to live as long as 10 years, and the oldest on record was 14 and a half years old, and thus they remain one of the most valuable thermometers gauging the health of our landscapes. The devout onslaught of intensive farming, token pesticides, associated insect decline and modern development has confined remaining UK colonies almost exclusively to the south and south-west of England. As is becoming the yarn, our current knowledge is barely doing the actual lives of these species any justice. With the grey long-eared bat especially, much remains unknown.

Don’t get me wrong, but I think we can agree that (like all bats), our grey long-eared was not blessed by the beauty stick – at least not by modern standards. Small beady eyes, pug-like face, frankly massive ears and clawed, membranous wings certainly aren’t represented by the same publicist as the dormouse. You know, I think somewhere along the line, centuries ago, we confused the word ‘weird’ with ‘ghastly’, ‘eerie’, ‘unnatural’, ‘grotesque’ and ‘freakish’ – all valid synonyms in the Oxford English Thesaurus. Such words led us firmly down the dark alley of digression, far away from the character of this unique animal. I think it’s high time that we return.

I had missed my girlfriends. The endless chatter. How often should we wash our hair? And do you face towards the showerhead or away from it? Is going to bed at 9.30 p.m. considered sad or sensible? We spent a good portion of the stretch between Sidmouth and Weston Mouth riding on circular sentences of ‘should they?’, or ‘shouldn’t they?’, of ‘does he like, like me in that way though?’ and debating the ethics of the girl making the infamous ‘first move’. A bench that was dedicated ‘To Brian. Who loved this view’ – was gradually being reclaimed by grasses. Grasshoppers chirred in the breeze. I felt like we were on holiday, falling into the trap of associating the exotic and interesting with foreign shores. Lush valleys and old, weathered woodland folded into a cleavage between clifftops. Everything had a hardy, steadfast exterior.

Our quads endured a battering on the ascent of Weston Cliff. From all directions, its steep climb is infamous. A summit so long and flat, it looks as though it’s been lopped with a cheese wire. The South West Coast Path has an uncanny ability to test your emotions. One minute you stand empowered and elated, having just reached a peak; the next, you slither down the ladder to the shore. This game repeats itself along the entire 630 miles. And it was at Weston Mouth beach that Harriet, Briony and I stripped down to our underwear and ran (*drunken-looking stumble), squealing, into a brown sea. Despite the cold rush making us sound like a full maternity ward in sure need of hot towels and a midwife – it was bliss. Rinsed by the waves, the breeze stepped in for the blow-dry. Salty, refreshed and proud, we dressed, scoffed sandwiches and rejoined our path to the grey long-eared bat.

It’s to be expected that humans would look to the natural world for a little inspiration. After all, most plants and animals have spent a bit more time on Earth – innovating and finding solutions. From Chinese inventor Lu Ban observing how lotus leaves deflect heavy rain to Da Vinci’s flying machines and a kingfisher’s dive teaching Japanese bullet trains to fillet the wind, the umbrella, the plane and the train have enabled humans to progress at astonishing speed. ‘Echolocation’ – the ability for animals such as bats and cetaceans (hiya, harbour porpoise!) to produce, receive and process the echoes of ultrasonic pulses – has been a trait that we have eagerly added to our little syndicate. From nautical charts mapping the seafloor to instructing warfare or betraying a hair grip on an airport security scanner, sonar makes a vital contribution to our world.

It’s thought that echolocation evolved separately in bats and whales, in what science refers to as ‘convergent evolution’ – where evolution generates similar solutions to problems in totally unrelated animals. The problem was simple for both the whale and the bat: finding food in the dark, whether on land or underwater, is a total bloody nightmare. And a landmark piece of research in 2019 found identical mutations in the set of 18 genes associated with mammalian hearing – in both whales and bats.

This beautiful coincidence unleashed the enviable skill of these utterly distant relatives to employ sound waves to navigate, communicate and hunt. It seems that the earliest bats, Old World fruit bats, flew first and developed tongue-clicking detection a little later. Scientists now believe this to be a rudimentary manner of using sonar. Further studies point to echolocation evolving in bats multiple times in response to environmental challenges. Our ‘whispering’ grey long-eared bat has acquired a suite of elite skills to outwit its prey as it gleans a busy meadow overnight. Detecting its low short harmonies following an exhausting trek across one-third of east Devon was going to be a challenge.

Such immaculate rearrangement of genetic code in response to ecological need is more likely to arise in groups of animals that have a healthy ‘gene pool’. Now, on the whole, I cannot wrap my head around genetics. It presents a similar challenge as looking at algebra without crying. But, all we need to know here is a fundamental distinction: a ‘healthy’ gene pool simply means an assortment of different genes floating around an interbreeding population. Where having children with someone who isn’t already in your family is usually the preferred choice.

In contrast, an ‘unhealthy’ gene pool is the opposite. Stunted growth, poor cognitive function and reduced fertility are some of the red flags that fly in a population where your brother might be your lover and father of another mother. (European royal families have somewhat perfected this over the years.)

The point is that genetics shape our armour against change – from climatic shifts to habitat availability. The more genetic variability a species has on offer, the more likely useful genes will be chosen and inherited by future generations. More genetic variation simply provides more space to play with – more room for advantageous combinations of mutations to arise in the genetic make-up. It’s just a better world for all. This is Darwin’s ‘natural selection’ in a nutshell. For many endangered species, however, it’s not so easy any more. These vital pools are shrinking – and it’s looking like the gene bank of the British grey long-eared bat may be nearing its overdraft.

Dr Orly Razgour is one of the world’s leading experts on bats. A colourful academic portfolio has taken her to Africa, the Peruvian Amazon, Europe and the Middle East. Our grey long-eared bat became the focus of her PhD at the University of Bristol, aiming to address the gaping hole in our understanding of this elusive mammal. Now a senior lecturer in ecology at the University of Exeter, the research Orly leads with her team is of international significance. Orly is also effortlessly cool. She likes coastal walking, camping, and dogs. Chatting over Zoom, I quickly clocked her funky earrings and striped backdrop as things I wished to adopt. It was a rare occasion in that she was exactly how I imagined her to be – if a little more brilliant.

Orly spoke of how the core range of the grey long-eared bat population roosts around the Mediterranean Basin and the Iberian Peninsula. ‘This is where the species has the highest levels of genetic diversity because these areas remained climatically suitable for them for hundreds of thousands of years,’ she said. Here, the bats had safe harbour in a forested life afforded by Mediterranean climes, while waves of glaciations gripped northern Europe during the last Ice Age (around the time we could have walked to Calais for that croissant…). ‘They thrived here for many generations,’ Orly explained, ‘and as a result, developed a very complex population structure and high levels of genetic diversity.’

As these southern European populations of grey long-eared bats burgeoned their gene pool like this, their British cousins could only recolonise when the ice retreated in the last 5,000 years or so. Because of this shorter evolutionary history, Orly described how modern British colonies represent a small fraction of the genetic variation found in the Iberian source population. Lump that on top of recent, severe population declines – and we’ve got ourselves a bit of a problem. ‘Low genetic variation means lower adaptive potential,’ Orly said simply. In essence, British grey long-eared bats have had less time to fashion their genetic chain mail, leaving them vulnerable to attack.

Orly led a study in 2017 at the University of Southampton, teaming up with Professor Gareth Jones, who coincidentally was one of my lecturers during my undergraduate days. Trialling a novel method, Orly and Gareth studied genetics and ecology in tandem to observe whether the genetic make-up of the grey long-eared bat can influence its response to climate change. Comparing the Iberian versus southern English populations lit a fascinating candle of thought, which applies to all species: are they physically equipped to deal with the planetary changes that are to come? Do all, or do any, species possess the genetic stamina to keep up with us, the merciless pace-setters?

Well, in the comfort of the short term, they might. Orly and Gareth used their data to predict that by 2080 the British Isles (good old Blighty of all places!) might become their safe, climatic haven, following an inevitable soaring of Iberian temperatures. As a rule, ecologists widely recognise Mediterranean ecosystems as facing a monumental biodiversity shake-up in warming years. Already, the average Spanish summer lasts for five weeks longer than summers lasted in the early 1980s. And joint research by Spain’s national weather agency and Ministry for Ecological Transition linked this change to around 1,200 annual human deaths. During the same period, the Mediterranean Sea has warmed by 0.34ºC every decade. With the exception of north-western Atlantic coasts, Orly writes how ‘all Iberian populations are projected to experience maximum temperatures outside the current thermal range’ of the grey long-eared bat. I suddenly feel quite hot.

Orly’s research predicts a turning of the tables within decades. A north-western shift in the distribution of suitable conditions will uproot the grey long-eared bat from the Mediterranean Basin, pushing it towards our shores. So primed was I for a bleak outlook, I found this surprising. Orly read my thoughts. ‘On the one hand,’ she said, ‘this is positive because we may even see this bat come up into Scotland, but on the other …’ – I could tell from her sigh she had delivered this line too many times – ‘what we’ve got to remember is that with the predicted loss of the Iberian populations, we will be losing this species’ highest reserves of genetic diversity. That means we may lose their evolutionary potential and their potential to respond well to environmental change.’ Sustaining a population whose gene pool has evaporated below the crucial level is as frantic and futile as a kettle boiling without enough water. If echolocation emerged from ancient reservoirs of undisturbed genes, I dread to think of the spells unable to be conjured in our bats of the future, the secrets and solutions that we will lose.

Despite the significance of Orly’s research, it remains unclear whether the bats in the Mediterranean will be physically able to relocate when rising temperatures overwhelm them or whether they’re going to be stranded and could disappear. Of course, we always need a better understanding of the ecology of these animals and predictions of their survivability under an unstable climate. But I wonder how lenient the clock is, since we have already had ample opportunities to learn more. How many penalties are we going to deliberately miss?

Yes, the thought of more bats with huge ears mapping British skies is a tantalising prospect, yet Orly was quick to reiterate the long-term lack of genetic resilience in British populations. She suggests that a mammal with the biological sensitivity of the grey long-eared bat may not withstand climatically altered areas in the future. So, with the British Isles already at the mercy of erratic weather, and if we’re estimating these animals' physical and genetic endurance, long-eared bats currently look more suited to a sprint than a marathon. I picture a sign hanging from a dangling carrot promising Shiny Renewed Prospects! in balmier Britain for the grey long-eared bat – only for those prospects to be dashed in a few years because somewhere down the line, the climate caused their biology to fail.

Orly concluded the study by proposing the need for an ‘evolutionary rescue in most vertebrates’. My mind raced. The very thought of this ‘evolution’ morphing into a (probably handsome and rugged) knight in shining armour, ready to slay all that dares to disrupt its battle plan, is reassuring. Not very feminist of me, I’ll admit. Yet its fragility in the face of powers greater than it, greater than Earth’s own religion, is frightening. Orly pulled me back. ‘More accurately, this “rescue” is through gene-flow from populations adapted to warm/dry conditions into maladapted populations (ones adapted to cooler/wetter conditions) that will enable maladapted populations to survive as the climate warms up.’

Leaving Branscombe up its famed ‘Heart Attack Hill’, we repeatedly paused to catch our breath. When we turned around, our prize was a stunning view down the west of the Jurassic Coast. Walkers have two options to reach Beer: contour through a low, woody path around the cliff or wander along the clifftop. We chose the latter, not willing to let go of the height we had just worked so hard for. This section of the path featured old coastguard lookout towers, quiet meadows and allotments. The sun felt hotter than ever, coaxing us into a daze as we finally descended to Seaton’s shingle beach. My friends had more pressing plans for the evening than waiting for an invisible bat. Understood. They disappeared in search of a bus.

With time to kill before I headed inland to Axminster, I lay on the beach overlooking a serene sea. The smell of fish and chips and gentle summer murmurs sent me into a sunburnt, weathered microsleep. With a long night ahead, I took my time to walk the last couple of miles inland, soon finding the track that led to the farm. A filmmaker and photographer called Neil was already there assembling a chaotic-looking camera rig to the side of an enormous old barn. Neil grinned wildly as the rig found its balance. Batman Craig soon followed. You see, the grey long-eared bat is so rare here that photos of it barely exist. Those that do exist leave much to be desired, given the challenges of nighttime photography. We’ve learnt most about this bat from studies in other countries and Orly’s research. Neil’s longstanding mission has been to capture some of the very first good photos of these animals in the wild – and at night. The farm itself is as idyllic as you might expect: a swathe of organic farmland in the bosom of the Devon hills, choosing a more mindful use of the land. Even from the car park, you can see – feel, even – meadows, woodland and ponds that sing. A choice to harmonise with nature here has transposed this song into a better key.

The huge barn was our base for the evening, its beams providing sanctuary for many bat roosts: noctules, pipistrelles and, of course, the grey long-eared. On the whole, bats are crevice dwellers. Mines, caves and underground environments are classic roosting sites, but to some extent, early farm buildings and cathedrals may have also accommodated bat populations. Wander through an old mill, barn or abbey, scout for little piles of moth wings on the floor, and you may be looking at the leftovers of a long-eared’s dinner. With Devon being increasingly sought after by property developers, I had asked Orly whether modern housing threatens the already scarce roosts of the grey long-eared bat. I can’t imagine that cavity-wall insulation, kitchen extensions and reroofing is as thrilling a prospect for this bat as it is for the people paying for them. Orly stressed the difficulty in forming any solid conclusion, but she worries about the lack of control these situations present. It turns out that science doesn’t have quite the same authority as a JCB and temporary traffic lights. Funny that.

Craig handed me a bat detector. I had never used one of these before but felt reassured to have any assistance that might help me glimpse our whispering hunter. I was unsure whether any skill is associated with looking for bats, save from patience. But I approached the situation with similar vigour to when I asked Miss Bradford to promote me from Villager #5 to Angel #1 in the school nativity.

Our grey long-eareds call in low, short pulses anywhere between 30–50 kilohertz. Given that human hearing is most acute at 2–4 kilohertz, we need all the help we can get. The detector itself looks a bit like a Game Boy. Tuneable, a dial on the front sets the frequency of the bat call you’re looking for. Then, a series of audible clicks, whistles and scrapes cutting through the white noise confirms whether your bat is present and echolocating. Dr Holger Goerlitz, a sensory biologist, was interviewed in a National Geographic article in 2010. I love his analogy when explaining the limits of a whispering call in a barbastelle bat. Like the grey long-eared, barbastelles enjoy eating moths with ears (hilarious image). Goerlitz spoke of how most bats’ sonar offers sight like ‘a bright torch’, whereas a barbastelle’s sonar, or indeed grey long-eared bat’s, flickers more like ‘a candle’ – only lighting the immediate area around them in a radius of fewer than 5 metres.

Grey long-eareds will fly up to 5 kilometres away from the colony on a foraging trip, so Craig, Neil, a few keen volunteers and I were stationed around the main entrances to the barn to catch their entry and exit to the meadow. The light was fading along with the heat of the day. A green woodpecker chuckled in a nearby tree. The flowers of meadowsweet, lady’s bedstraw, clover and buttercups perfumed the air. The main barn doors were open wide to the night.

Although the genetic fragility of the grey long-eared bat is (for the most part) beyond our control, we do have leverage over the health of its habitat. As vital to them as water, this insect-loving bat needs scrubby field margins and wildflower meadows in which to hunt. Not only were nearly all of these habitats sacrificed in post-war productivity, but associated insect biodiversity has also plummeted. More than that, a global review of insect numbers in 2019 revealed insect extinction to be eight times greater than that of reptiles, birds and mammals. If we do nothing, insects will become history within 100 years.

Without insects, many animals such as the grey long-eared bat will become starved of their food source. That includes us, indirectly, by the way. We must be careful not to forget the other animals that need the meadows as much as the bees. It may surprise you to know that bats are also highly effective pollinators. US researchers studying nectar-feeding bats write of the ‘tequila connection’, where Mexican long-nosed bats are solely responsible for pollinating all the agave plants that fix our Tequila Slammers – thanks to their furry bodies receiving a blanket of pollen as they visit flower after flower. In the UK alone, we drink nearly 2 million litres of tequila every year. The financial, let alone social implications of encouraging bat pollination are as clear as the spirit itself.

One of the main culprits driving insect decline is the amount of pesticides that we allow to shower the land. A recent enquiry found that 17,000 tonnes of chemicals have licence to saturate the UK countryside every year. As I write, there are talks of halving this by 2030 and pleas from environmental organisations to confirm the benefits of nature-friendly farming in legislation. Granted, this is all very well, but we forget how nature had already identified this problem for us – centuries ago. Supervising pain-in-the-arse species is one of the most ancient riddles that evolution sought to solve.

‘Grey long-eared bats consume a lot of moths – and a lot of pests are moths,’ Orly told me. ‘Where they forage along “edge” habitat, it puts them close to agricultural areas, so the pests they eat are likely the ones directly affecting crops.’ Grey long-eared bats hunt in both the forest and open meadow, and by default, they have an appetite for a greater variety of the pests that we wish to eradicate. Consuming up to 4,000 insects per night, the bat’s appetite has encouraged some farmers in Europe to ditch pesticides altogether and instead plough the money they save into making the habitat more suitable for bats.

What puzzles me is that the pesticides we continue to administer can be responsible for the death of this natural pest management. A study looking at German bat populations and pesticides found that chemical residues can remain on flies, moths and spiders for up to two weeks. The bats that gleaned such invertebrates were contaminated, leading to long-term health problems. And if that’s not sufficiently unsettling, emerging data show how pesticides from modern agriculture can linger indefinitely in the air – the silent, invisible assassin.

This battle for control should never have even happened. ‘The impact of a loss of grey long-eared bats in the UK is not going to be immense,’ admitted Orly, referring to their rarity. ‘But in Europe, they are known to consume many agricultural pests, and this could be a huge service that the UK could miss out on because the population size is so small.’

Female grey long-eared bats have one pup a year – if they’re lucky. I imagine that they would be pretty cute. Another long-eared bat study that Orly led (told you she was good!) found a fascinating connection between lactating females and unimproved grassland. Analysing data from radio tags on the bats revealed a preference for this particular habitat, especially while rearing young. This data immediately points to the value of wild grassland in yielding high-quality insect food to convert to milk for a hungry pup. It may surprise you to learn that up to 40 species of plant can grow per square metre of wildflower meadow, each fraternising with its insect counterpart. Safe to say, these meadows are among the richest habitats in the world, but now, one of Britain’s rarest. Meadow connectivity is compromised, and that mother bat is going to have to travel further to find food.

You’ll be glad to hear that Back from the Brink prioritises this as part of its epic tapestry project. Re-stitching broken habitats for these bats is motivated by the expected influx of settlers from a toasting Mediterranean. Managing the land for bats within 5 kilometres of the roosting sites is recommended to buffer their foraging territory. ‘But it’s not just a case of whether the habitat can be found,’ Orly told me, ‘it’s whether the bats can actually reach it.’ Ask a breastfeeding human mum about their energy levels, and they will tell you they are beyond exhausted. So, they’re probably not feeling up to a messy commute to Sainsbury’s. Producing rich milk that your offspring guzzles in minutes is all-consuming and burns up to 700 calories a day. ‘If we don’t piece the habitat back together, mothers are simply going to have to work harder, travel further and won’t be able to return as often to feed their young,’ Orly explained. I lament the unfairness of it all and secretly thank the universe that I wasn’t born a bat in the twenty-first century.

Back to the night. At the barn, our bat detectors and weak diurnal bodies were up against a lethal combination of nocturnal intelligence, agility and wit. When grey long-eared bats take flight, research suggests that their huge ears can be angled to increase lift and help conserve energy. When they are roosting, their ears are curled back and tucked under their wings.

We are such strangers to the night. Every day, we rebel against its rhythm by switching on lights. We replace starlight with blue light. We disobey our internal clocks. Any time we now spend wrapped in night’s cloak feels like reconnecting with an old friend we haven’t spoken to for years. There is much to catch up on, celestial anarchy to settle. But I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love a starry sky. Fuelled by the same urgency as catching the sunrise, making an effort to be part of a clear night is still one of my favourite things to do. My parents sometimes woke my brother and me just to tell us the stars were amazing that night. It was always worth being disturbed. ‘Look deep,’ my dad tells me as we gaze up. And ‘What were the stars like?’ is one of the first questions I will ask someone who has just come back from a remote location (swiftly followed by requesting a detailed account of the menu for the week).

My fingers holding the bat detector were freezing. My bum ached from the hike to get there. There will always be something captivating about looking for a nocturnal animal. If anything, it presents a new rulebook in which to trust – waiting for dark to fall whittles away at our senses, our hearing and touch chisel to compensate for the loss of light. Our pupils dilated, like ink might blot a page. I stood at the back of the barn, straining my ears and eyes to map this other world. Barely visible, blending in with the wall next to the barn, Craig was in the zone. A sound like a squeaky wheel and smacking lips cracked through the receiver as something darted out of the barn. I checked my detector – 120 kilohertz – a lesser horseshoe bat. And so, it began. Craig mentioned that pipistrelles and noctules are usually the first to emerge and that if we saw a bat but didn’t detect its call, it may well be a grey long-eared. There were eight of us in total. At regular intervals, we would correlate bat ‘scores’ huddled in the corner, as people at the pub might discuss last night’s game. When a few noctules had flown over and some time passed, I reset my detector to the range of the grey long-eared.

Around 9.30 p.m., it was now prime time for our bat to begin its nightly forage across the meadows, gardens and field edges, sometimes leaving the roost for six hours. I like to imagine that if the barn owl considers itself nocturnal aristocracy, then the grey long-eared bat is bona fide royalty. Friends, this bat is elite in the very raw sense of the word. Highly manoeuvrable, its large, scaffolded wings permit both fast, straight flight across the open meadow, as well as accurate banking through cluttered woodland. Where a bird’s breast keel forms a strong muscle base to control the wing beat, bats have one muscle, a flattened ribcage and a fusing of vertebrae. Not only does this just sound insane, but this minimalism also affords the bat agility and lightness that is unmatched.

As I mentioned earlier, a favourite snack of the grey long-eared is the yellow underwing moth, a regular resident of the meadow. A ‘tympanic’ moth, the yellow underwing has evolved its own set of skills to avoid being taken. The tympanic organ, a drum-like sensory hearing aid, has developed in response to the fear of being eaten by an ultrasonic hunter. Many moths have adapted in this way. Tympanic membranes can read a bat’s sonar and sound the alarm bell – giving the moth a chance to evade capture. A group from the University of Bristol, including Dr Goerlitz (of the excellent ‘candle’ analogy I mentioned earlier), found that yellow underwing moths are tweaked so minutely to the sonar of bats that movement the size of an atom can activate the nerve cells in this hearing organ.

We’ve seen this before. From the gazelle slipping the grip of the lioness to bacteria outfoxing antibiotics, an invisible battle across nature strives for the upper hand. Nature’s arms race. An impetus to become smarter, faster, stronger, more immune, yet as habitual and unnoticed as breathing. During our call, Orly described how the whispering bats could ‘switch off their echolocation … to simply listen to prey-generated sounds’. The fatal betrayal of a wing beat and a rustle of antennae are sometimes all that is needed. The arms race between moth and bat has made the grey long-eared think beyond the standard-issue acoustic box, making it covert, sly and challenging to study. As primatologist Frans de Waal so rightly asked in the title of his bestselling book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Well, Frans, I throw my cap into the proverbial ring and hazard a guess that we are not.

If hair straighteners and various sprays, gels and mousses form a crucial part of your morning routine, you may consider yourself unlucky if your perfect mane gets caught in the rain later that day. Similarly, in nature, the more specialised you are, the more likely you are to lose out when a significant change occurs in your environment. Ecologists have seen Devon’s bats foraging in suburban areas, but more on the margins of villages versus near the city. Craig mentioned how grey-long eareds are loyal to the maternity roost, often not even attempting settlement in more modern developments. They also roost-share with brown long-eareds fairly contentedly – a pleasant thought. Rows of ears huddled along a wizened oak beam like children on the side of a swimming pool, waiting for permission to dive.

Bats are a sure sign that an environment is healthy: their immense mobility can indicate areas of good water quality and resilient insect assemblages, and bats bolster our food security. We now know that grey long-eareds might stand a chance of surviving climate change in the UK if the habitat accommodates a healthy breeding population in the long term. Pesticides, hopefully, will take less of a toll on our countryside, but a mounting body of current research is investigating an altogether different kind of pollution. ‘Electromagnetic radiation’ includes radio waves, visible light, microwaves, ultraviolet and infrared. Bats are susceptible to such radiation, many of which govern their navigation, orientation and migration. And (albeit a little late to the party) it just so happens that our deliberate introduction of electromagnetic radiation – to help us navigate, orientate, and migrate within the nightscape – seems to sacrifice the very animal whose biology inspired it.

Jack Merrifield is an engineering and physical sciences PhD student at the University of Southampton. Aside from being a mate of a mate, Jack specialises in the effects of environmental pollutants on ecological communities. When I spoke to him over the phone, he was working on his PhD: mapping Southampton's artificial light and noise pollution in relation to bats and their prey. It soon became apparent that light pollution, coupled with the small headache of climate change, is an entirely different ball game. A new arms race may well be emerging.

‘Light is wherever humans are, and it is having a hugely negative impact,’ he told me. ‘Climate change is a really important issue, but it cannot be looked at in isolation. We urbanise so rapidly … “money talks”, right?’ Even over the course of his PhD, the lighting spectrum of Southampton has utterly changed. LEDs4 have swiftly replaced traditional halogen and halides in complex subtypes of ‘cool blue’ and ‘warm white’. Southampton now has over seven different lighting spectra. Despite LEDs consuming around 50–70 per cent less fossil fuel energy than incandescent bulbs, lighting still (and will) account for at least 5 per cent of global carbon emissions.

In 2017, a team from the University of Exeter measured an increase in the range and intensity of human illumination by 2 per cent a year, leading to an erosion of seasonal light patterns and a glorious screwing up of Earth’s biological calendar. From hormonal cycles to breeding to whether an animal gets dinner or not, the rhythm of night and day is the ringmaster (or at least it used to be).

‘The impact on bats is just massive,’ Jack admitted. ‘The area around the lights create predictably clumped food sources – a kind of vacuum for midges and moths.’ We’ve all seen the frenzy with which a moth fraternises with the lamp. And this mass exodus of insects attracted to the city glow that Jack described leaves those bats left in the surrounding countryside, caught in what some call an ‘ecological trap’ – where slim invertebrate pickings are all that’s on offer.

‘Crossing a noisy, illuminated street for many bats is like asking us to walk through a brick wall. It just doesn’t work with its biology,’ Jack remarked. Craig agreed, stressing how light-averse grey-long eared bats are. Artificial light can delay or even prevent emergence from roosts. Or cause bats to abandon roosts altogether. Research like Jack’s supports calls for ‘bat bridges’ and ‘safe bat paths’, following similar logic to ‘green bridges’ over motorways, which safely corridor wildlife. Treelines, hedgerows, speed reductions, culverts, bat boxes and containment of ‘light spill’ are modest but promising thoughts to support the dwindling species of the nightscape. Bring on the day that a road sign hailing ‘Bats are here’ is designed and normalised across cities.

Connecting meadow habitats is vital, and a project by the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) aims to ensure that. As I write, ‘Return of the True Night Rider’ aims to preserve the vital outpost of Devon’s grey long-eared bat population. Not as I initially thought via a hot release at the cinema, but rather a joining of hands. Craig told me that landlords and communities are restoring crucial bat commuting routes between Devon and Dorset, ‘An essential step in preventing the genetic isolation of colonies.’ Jack agreed but insisted that more research and mitigation for artificial pollution is vital to their long-term survival. ‘It’s very rare that a bat will encounter just one negative impact at a time, so it’s a question of looking at them collectively. Only then will you create a habitat that has low resistance to bat mobility.’

Through my receiver came a different call, like someone tapping a biro impatiently on the table or water dripping very fast – perhaps the Daubenton’s bat. I had twiddled my dial, impatience tiptoeing around, tempting me to settle for any bat at all. But none of them was a grey long-eared. I dialled it lower, returning to 30–50 kilohertz: the white noise, our lullaby. If a grey long-eared bat appears and chooses to echolocate, then the noise we hear would be a faint purring. Apt for this particular bat, of course, to emulate feline superiority. Craig admitted it’s rare to detect the returning bats. His admission suited my fading energy. I wasn’t up for a six-hour stint. I needed my bed, YouTube and a bit of cheddar. So, we orientated our detectors towards the black hole of the barn, waiting for those yet to embark. Now nearing 11.00 p.m., it was utterly silent – save for the rustling of jackets and shifting of feet.

All of a sudden, two, maybe three, black shapes darted over me. I strained for any purring over my detector – any at all. Nothing. Unsure, I grinned up at Craig, trying to correspond through the thick of the dark, but I couldn’t see him nor him me. The night sky got the grin instead. Our whispering hunter may have just left the building.

There was no doubt that I was having an exceptionally good night. Waiting for a grey long-eared bat to emerge and reveal itself is like waiting for a bus that may never turn up. But it’s infinitely more interesting. As I write, the UK is in the grips of the most severe wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Research around its origins is frantic. Reams of articles report how this pandemic has refocused our attention on bats as harbourers of deadly zoonotic5 viruses, re-condemning them to their outdated cultural corner. This terrible, global press has triggered mass culling events in Africa, Latin America and Asia. An avalanche of journalistic prosecution. Photos of their skewered, barbecued bodies on sale in Asian wet-meat markets have thwarted their conservation – plunging them into a nightmare more haunting than the ones they inspire.

It strikes me that bats are a convenient reservoir for our problems. Even in our 200,000-year blip on Earth, our impact has been profound. And as a fungal network sprawls beneath the woodland, sometimes our hidden touches are the most influential. The way we talk, the language we choose can spell life or death for an animal as misplaced as the bat. This issue is so pertinent that Orly and others from the University of Exeter released several papers in 2020 dissecting the depiction of bats in light of Covid-19. And the conclusions are clear: these animals are terrifyingly mistaken. More time spent considering their unique biology and behaviour could be the ultimate teacher in helping humanity to prevent another public health crisis. ‘Because what is really at risk here,’ Orly implored, ‘is that when we destroy bat habitat, bats come closer to humans and livestock. And that’s when transmission can happen.’

‘It’s our impacts on the environment that are causing this risk. Rather than being an intrinsic problem with bats.’ Because you see, it’s all about how close we get to the bats themselves. How much we prod their habitats with our problems and test the boundaries. Knowing them is knowing our future. We could better predict how a disease might spread alongside land-use change. We could better predict for and mitigate its inevitable spill over into humans, livestock and other species. Knowing bats better could shift the baseline needed to future-proof ourselves and the natural world. But it’s easier to slag things off instead of finding a solution, isn’t it?

A study in 2017 at a medical school in Singapore found that while bats harbour a strangely high number of harmful zoonotic diseases compared with other mammals, the researchers stress that this does not provide grounds to fear them. Depressingly, in the same study, they report that 96 per cent of ‘virological literature’ snubbed the role of bats in the environment. Still, centuries on from ‘Death Bat’, we remain loyal to our epic oversight of these animals. What’s new, eh?

‘We need to focus on their ecosystem services,’ Orly advised. ‘We still need to be aware that they host many pathogens, but yeah – so does every other animal.’ Our relationship with bats has outlasted that of dogs, horses and domestic animals. Jack reminded me how we once shared caves with bats: ‘The secrets that we yield about bats provide unique insights to our own biology. And with climate change, we have the gift of foresight.’ Good point. It’s not every day with an issue as gigantic as this that we have the numbers, the data, the knowledge and tech to address it. ‘If we don’t take advantage of this rare position, I worry that this situation will just continue,’ he said.

Look – it’s complicated. It’s off-beat. I get it.

I went to the let’s-swap-bat-scores corner where Craig stood and asked the all-important question. ‘Could be …’ he shrugged, looking skyward. He said while it’s likely that they were grey long-eared bats, you can never be sure. That’s good enough for me.

Towards the end of our call, PhD researcher, Jack told me how new evidence is emerging on some bats, finding how they can form friendships across species and actively travel further to maintain them – for years. I have so many questions – the research is unfolding as we speak – so I’ll keep you posted. ‘Even for humans to maintain a relationship for over a decade is remarkable,’ he laughed. ‘So, the fact that a small, aerial mammal can do it is fascinating.’

We were calling it a night. Packing away the detectors and helping to shut up the barn, Craig suddenly called to me in a loud whisper. ‘It’s poo! I think I’ve found – it’s poo.’ Jogging to a large table inside the barn, head torch on, he whipped out a bat poo ID guide as casually as though it were a set of car keys. On the table below the oak beams sat a small mound of brown, crumbly droppings. And they were sparkling. Glittery poo. Yaaasss! People, the grey long-eared bat defecates like a queen. A dead giveaway to its diet, the hard ‘chitin’6 exterior of the insects it eats are ingested, digested and expelled as a fine, fabulous powder within the faeces. It sparkled in the torchlight, like frost.

Photographer Neil and his epic camera contraptions didn’t yield on that particular evening. But, I’m delighted to say that since that night (and after many attempts), he has managed to capture the first high-resolution night-time photographs of our English grey-long eared bat – and they are astounding. Ears seem larger than ever, eyes bright and seeking. I don’t see a flying mouse when I look at them. I don’t see vermin. I see a hunter – a highly evolved piece of biological machinery. I see an animal that I want to know more about. I see an animal that deserves better.

Here, in this barn, the bats are free. Or, in Cockney rhyming slang, they are ‘yet to be’, which I prefer. A clumsy, exhausted smile broke my face. Glittering faeces at midnight is a lot to process. Plus, I needed rest. Because in two days, I was to embark on the longest journey of this rather wild pursuit – it was almost time for me to wend my way north. To Orkney.

Notes

1 Up yours, Corona.

2 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

3 Where the bats live in colonies, give birth and raise their young during the summer.

4 Light-emitting diodes (AKA bright AF)

5 An infectious disease that is able to pass from non-human animals (usually other vertebrates) to humans.

6 Basically, just a load of fibre that makes up for the insect not having a traditional skeleton.