Pipistrellus Hespera (Bat)

wow, that is small!

Very unlikely your cats did this they are quick but not as quick as bats.
Great little creatures - I found a similar size one at work and hung him on a nail in my shed. Fed him greenfly off the roses till strong enough to fly.

~very good of you ,BB~

Gross....I love it!!!

It truly is small...took me a second to realize it wasn't a clump of cat fur but then I don't have a cat this color...made me take a second look.

I once had a cat that cought bats. She'd sit on the roof and catch them.

oops Hide the cats

Must have been welsh bats Hywel - Appearing in Dai Hard.

I will tell you that these cats catch the craziest things and I've had to sit with them for a while to teach them that the hummingbirds are off limits...there were no marks on the bat except one wing appeared to be ripped..the membrane part...that's why I figured it was a cat grabbing it out of the air...Oh, well..I'll never know for sure...

Sorry Skippy looked this up under Bats protection league and apparently cats can catch bats if they roost in or near houses.They cant catch them in flight but the so and so s lie in wait as they emerge to pounce.

They recommend if you have bats that cats not let out till after dusk but then this assumes all the neighbours do the same with theirs.

I have bats in the belfry ( another english expression for being a little crazy ! so no surprise there then ) in the church next door so safe from cats sorry hadnt considered them lying in wait - just trying to catch them in flight.

Hey, BB...all is well...and you are right...cats lie in wait if they see a challenge...I worry more about rabies....some bats do carry the disease..

awww the poor little guy, i love bats

I love them too, Irish. They are very good for the garden area...

http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/tmot1/pipihesp.htm
Found this on wiki....I was shocked at how many insects they will consume in a feeding...they are slow fliers who are active into the daylight hours and feed as low as a meter off the ground...(probably why your cat was able to nab it!) The ears on them are their best feature...they look very foxlike...
I have materials to construct bat houses which I was supposed to take to my cousin's farm this summer....They aren't really houses, as in the birdhouse sense...but more like roosts for hibernating bats. Wonderful creatures ....nature's equivalent of the buglight.!!

I live very near some cliffs which have caves in them. This is where they roost. I have seen them flying out of that cave. I have never seen them in the daytime but I will have to be honest, I have never kept my eye open for them during the day. While looking it up, I thought it was one of the cutest bats.

Thanks for the information, Lori. I looked up the path you gave and it said about the same thing other sites were saying. You are right, that is a lot of bugs.

Bats are wonderful, anything that eats mosquitoes is a hit with me!!

Oh, they don't eat them all. I still get bitten especially after a summer rain unless I am diligent about putting on bug repellent spray...

Skippy5869, I get bitten all the time and I am allergic to their saliva, so if I get more than a couple of bites I start to shake and feel faint and can have trouble breathing. So I take MAJOR precautions with long pants and long sleeves and repellent if I will be outside for long . But I figure that with the bats around I can at least go to my car and back without being bitten. I put up a bat house about 10 years ago and now have a nice little (flock?) to patrol my yard.

Wow! That's wonderful (i mean wonderful that you have a bat house.) Two of my sons were allergic also and if they got bitten by a mosquito or ant they would get baseball sized bumps everywhere they were bitten so we had to take protective measures for them also.

I saw a spot on the internet recently (will have to try to find it and give you the coordinates!!) posted by gardeners who had become proactive in their mosquito controls...they built a pond and fostered dragonflies!! Now isn't that smart? So if you have bats and dragonflies...you would have many less mosquitoes!!

Hey, Lori...nice to see you...dragonflies...there's a thought but I'm afraid the pond would be a source for more mosquitos..if you weren't going to have fish or plants in the pond then I guess the water could be treated to discourage the mosquitos...I do plan to have a very small pond, mostly for the soothing sound but I also plan to treat the water..we don't have a problem with mosquitos but I would like to keep it that way. Thanks for the info, Lori...you always have such good advice and it usually gets me thinking...

Wow how incredible such tiny creatures! They are truly facinating!
Very nicely said bonkers (about the bats in your belfry)! HA!

The larvae of the dragonflies eat the larvae of the mosquitoes...works two ways...the adult dragonflies eat the adult mosquitoes...win ..win..
then at night the bats take care of any that might escape the D-flies during the day.... I'm definitely going to contact the Min. of the Env. and see if I can purchase dfly nymphs for my pond... the fellows had decided that since fish might interfere with the nymphs that they would only have insects in their pond...I really must see if I can find the site again...

Great! If you find the site would you share it with me...I will look online but my time is limited..I don't have a pond yet but I can keep the info in my gardening journal...

sorry I miss spoke..it is the nymphs of the dfly that eat the larvae of the mosquito.... more likely threat of rabies from terrestrials...coyotes, skunks, raccoons, dogs, cats....Check out Robin Williams "Batty rap" from "Ferngully"...it's a hoot!

Thanks, Lori. I was able to look up a site that said it was the nymphs that ate the larvae...true about the threat of rabies but the possibility is there and I would not like to see the cats suffer in any way.....

I'm alarmed to hear that Bonkers has been nailing bats to the inside of his shed........ 0_0

Now, Sid that's how nasty rumours get started...lol...I think what he said was that he "hung it on a nail" and fed it til it was strong enough to fly....
did I miss something???lol.

Thank you Lori - guess Sid giving me a bit of my own medicine , sort of daft comment I would make ! Funny though .

Perhaps I should be a little careful live not far from Whitby , where Dracula s coffin was said to have been brought by ship in the Bram Stoker novel.Oooooh !

he he he ;-D

Did the bat like the greenflys, Bb? I'm impressed you managed to feed it by hand :-)

LOL...game, set and match Sid!!!

Not finger fed used a cocktail stick .Able to pick his teeth with it after he d finished.

Haahaha....BB, You don't miss a lick do you....lol
Great thing to witness Skippy, not something everyone is going to see in person in their lifetime.

He's so furry, I've never seen one with such a coat. About a month ago, just as the sun was going down I saw huge colony of bats flying overhead, back and forth. I'm not sure where they roost in the day around here... and I haven't seen them lately.

perhaps they were feeding, TG? you know how insects sometimes swarm...( flying ants for instance) ? I've only ever seen the little black bats that we have around here... must be great to see the huge fruit bats that they have in Australia...they are about the size of a squirrel... wonder what it's like to fly by echo location! lol...one wrong blip and splat!

Tg, I was really surprised when I saw that it was a bat. At first look, it did not compute but the wing structure was a dead giveaway. (Oops! no pun intended) He kinda looks like a hunk of wool. I didn't even know bats came this tiny til I looked it up.

Hey, Lori..how's it going? My bats spend the day in the caves located in the cliffs right next to my house. I'll bet if you ask around someone will know where those bats stay. Lori is really keen on looking stuff up.

Tg, do you know what kind of bats they were or could you see any detail?

That is sooooo small , too cool .