Watching Bats

The best time of year is summer when bats are most active. Choose a place that is safe to walk at night, make sure to wrap up warm and carry a torch with spare batteries and a bat detector with spare batteries if you have access to one. Among the best locations to watch are at known roosts when bats are emerging. Arrive at dusk - most Irish species emerge between sunset and 1 hour and 30 minutes afterwards. Get comfortable (bring a stool) and try to get your line of vision against the sky so you can see the bats silhouetted against the falling light levels. Never shine a torch on their entrance/exit point because this will delay emergence or prevent emergence entirely. Other places to go watch bats could be local areas of freshwater and trees – such as rivers or canals. In this kind of location you can shine a torch beam across the surface of still water and you may see a Daubenton’s bat fly quickly across catching insects on the surface of the water. A bat flitting around a hedgerow could be a common pipistrelle.

You can watch bats along a stretch of waterway in your locality and help contribute to a nationwide count of Daubenton's bats. To find out more about the Waterways Survey and how to volunteer see the Monitoring page on this website.

A number of bat walks guided by local bat groups or the National Parks and Wildlife Service are organised during the summer. For details of BCI events see the events page.