(ethereal music)
- Once it gets dark,
it's just
beautiful, really.
You can just appreciate bats flying around.
(soft music)
- [Danielle] They are incredible creatures.
I was hooked, basically,
for something so tiny to live for 30 years
and they break all the rules.
You know, they can hibernate,
and they can fly,
and they can echolocate.
So they have superpowers, basically.
And they're cute.
(laughing)
(bat chirping)
- [Danielle] We're doing a long-term study
of the bats in the woods.
- People tend to work on larger animals;
they're more charismatic.
- 53.4.
- Four finger bat?
30 grammes?
- Yeah.
- And really the only way you can find out
about the lives of these animals
is by doing this kind of research.
One of the wildlife experiences
I will never forget,
is hanging in a cave in Austin, Texas,
where there was a roost of 10 million
Mexican free-tailed bats.
- [Danielle] They're fascinating because we still
know so little about them
and there is a lot to learn.
It's just a glimpse into that world, really.
We are looking at the social networks
of the bats in the woods.
For the past eight years,
we've been looking for bats in boxes
when the great tits and the blue tits fledge,
the bats move in,
and it's one of the best pictures
of bats that you can get.
We can follow the same bats
and their movement patterns around the Wood.
There are seven colonies using different areas.
The Natterer's males and females
belong to the same colony
and they are within a specific area,
but for Daubenton's,
so very similar species,
they actually have a completely different social system.
The bats choose to stay
year after year with their
mothers and aunts and sisters,
but male Daubenton's form a completely separate
social network; they form bachelor groups
and move around the wood,
creating more connections.
(laughing)
And there are so many roosts.
We can actually find
a high proportion of the population.
You just have to keep looking, basically.
It's, just keeps growing, this project.
I want to do more and more.
(gentle music)
But you can only study
the bats that choose to use the boxes.
So we need to follow them into the trees as well.
We have mist nets and they are very fine
nylon net and harp traps.
Named for pretty obvious reasons.
It's a bit like a harp.
Bats will fly into it,
if you're very lucky,
therefore we're also recording
additional species that aren't
roosting in the boxes, but are here.
So there are 12 to 14 species,
possibly even 16 or more species.
(birds chirping)
So many people don't ever
really interact with bats,
they're oblivious to them, but they are here.
- [George] Education is the key.
You can't love something,
you can't value something
if you don't understand it.
You know, and if you want
scientists in the future,
if you want people
to come to places like this
and marvel at it and say,
"Wow, this is worth hanging on to,"
you need to reach kids.
(gentle music)
Show them a bat, give them a bat,
inspire them, you know, get that spark going.
- So here's one of the main species
we find in the boxes.
- [George] Places like Wytham Woods are
absolutely crucial because they are a natural lab.
They are where
you go to find out about
how the world works,
how organisms interact.
If you can't do it here,
where are you going to do it?
Bats do have bad press
and people aren't really aware of
the truth of what their lives are.
Most bats are actually
doing good in the world, pollinating,
you know, we wouldn't have coffee,
chocolate or bananas without bats.
- [George] Places like Wytham Woods,
we've used as a lab for so long
they're relatively unspoilt
and bats need places to roost - holes,
hollows, snags.
Around me here, I can't see any bats,
but there maybe
several hundred bats within
a hundred yards of me here.
Out of sight until it goes dark
and then things will start to get interesting.