Why Bats Choose the Suburbs

Dusk in a British garden is a busy hour, and bats are often closer than people realise. Our commonest species, the common and soprano pipistrelles, weigh about as much as a two-pence piece and will happily hunt along suburban streets, allotments and railway embankments. You may never see one clearly, but the flickering, jerky flight around a street lamp at twenty past nine is almost certainly a pipistrelle on the wing.

Britain has eighteen resident bat species, from the modest pipistrelle to the woodland noctule and the water-loving Daubenton's. All of them are protected by law, and it is an offence to disturb a bat or damage a roost, even unintentionally. That protection is not a barrier to helping them — it simply means the best approach is to make your patch better without disturbing anything that already lives there. A garden, a hedge and a decent pond, joined up with your neighbours' patches, can genuinely change how many bats pass overhead.

Turn Down the Lights

Light is the single biggest thing you can tackle. Most British bats avoid bright ground, and artificial light at dusk delays their emergence from roosts and breaks up the dark corridors they use to travel. Lighting a garden or the front of a house for security at night can effectively remove a feeding route.

• Switch off unnecessary outdoor lights, especially between dusk and dawn, and use timers or motion sensors rather than leaving them on all evening.
• Choose warm, low-colour-temperature bulbs (2700K or lower) or amber and red LEDs, which disturb bats far less than cool white light.
• Shield fittings so light points downwards and does not spill upwards or across hedges, trees and water.
• Keep lights away from mature trees, roof edges, ponds and boundary hedgerows, as these are the features bats rely on.
• Close curtains and blinds, and consider planting a shrub screen to catch light at the boundary.

If you can create a genuinely dark strip along one edge of your garden, perhaps the side nearest a hedge or stream, you have given local bats a usable route through the neighbourhood.

Boxes, Bark and Buildings: Places to Roost

Bats need somewhere dry and warm to spend the day, and small gaps do nicely. Mature trees with loose bark, old orchard trees, cavity walls, weatherboarding, ridge tiles and roof voids are all potential roosts. Ivy left to thicken on a wall or tree can become a summer roost in itself.

If you have no obvious gaps, add bat boxes. Mount two or three at three to five metres on a south or south-west facing wall or tree, sheltered from prevailing wind and not above a window or door. Crevice-style boxes suit pipistrelles; larger designs with a landing area attract brown long-eared bats. Use untreated, rough-sawn timber, since bats need a surface they can grip, and place boxes in clusters or along different aspects — a warm box and a cooler box gives bats somewhere to move as temperatures change. Avoid opening boxes to check them, and never handle a bat yourself.

A Larder Full of Insects

Bats eat insects, so the real task is feeding the moths, midges, beetles and craneflies. A garden rich in invertebrates will be rich in bats.

• Stop using insecticides, including lawn treatments and ant powders, and allow some nettles, dandelions and long grass to stand.
• Plant night-scented flowers that draw moths: honeysuckle, evening primrose, jasmine, lavender, buddleia and tobacco plant.
• Leave a wildflower strip unmown through summer, cutting it once in late August if you wish.
• Build a log pile, a compost heap and a leaf mound to shelter larvae and overwintering insects.
• Keep a few older trees if you can, and let deadwood stand where it is safe to do so.

A single pipistrelle can take thousands of small insects in a night, so a garden with a healthy moth population is doing real work.

Water, Hedges and Night Corridors

Water is a powerful draw. A small wildlife pond with shallow, sloping edges and no fish will support the midges and aquatic insects that bats such as Daubenton's hunt low over the surface. Fill it with native plants and avoid pesticides or run-off from the lawn.

Structure matters too. Hedgerows, tree lines, garden boundaries and quiet lanes act as flight paths, letting bats move safely between roosts and feeding grounds. Native hedging such as hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and field maple is far better than a close-boarded fence, and gaps under gates can be left so bats and hedgehogs can pass through. If several neighbours plant or keep hedges in the same stretch, the effect is cumulative.

Watching and Recording at Dusk

Stand outside about twenty minutes after sunset on a mild, still evening from April to October, and watch the sky rather than the trees. Pipistrelles usually appear first; noctules fly high and early; brown long-eared bats emerge late and stay low around foliage. A basic heterodyne bat detector turns their echolocation into clicks and buzzes, and the change in rhythm as a bat closes on prey is unmistakable.

Recording what you hear, even just the time, species if known and weather conditions, helps local bat groups understand how populations are faring. If you find a grounded or injured bat, do not pick it up with bare hands; wear gloves, place it in a ventilated box in a quiet, dark place and contact a local bat worker for advice. With a little less light and a little more cover, your street can become a better place for bats at dusk.