Bats
Step into the garden at dusk and meet the only mammal that truly flies.
On a warm evening you can stand in your own garden or a park and watch a real bat flicker past overhead. This ready-made collection follows Britain's bats — what they are, how they hunt in the dark, where they live across the year, and how we can help them. Open it in your Resource Pack to explore, print, or share.
This fills your Resource Pack with these resources, ready to explore, edit, print or share.
What you’ll explore
- Bats are mammals — in fact the only mammals that can truly fly — and at least one UK bat can be named and recognised.
- A bat finds and catches its food in the dark using echolocation, and every UK bat is an insect-eater.
- A bat has its place in a simple food chain, with a habitat and a life cycle that turns through the year.
- Discover why a flying animal is still a mammal, and the clever ways a bat is built for life in the dark — a step up for older or curious readers.
- UK bats are rare and specially protected, and there are real, practical ways to help them.
A suggested path
1 · Meet Britain's bats
Six bats you could meet in Britain — from the matchbox-sized pipistrelle to the odd-faced barbastelle and the horseshoe bat that shouts through its nose.
2 · How bats work
Three posters on how a bat's body and life work: how it hunts in the dark, how its year turns from pup to hibernation, and where it makes its home.
3 · Bats in the food web
Bats are hunters and hunted. They snap up midges and moths in the dark, and may themselves be caught by a tawny owl — a simple food chain to build.
4 · A bat from the other side of the world
Meet the Brazilian free-tailed bat — it gathers in colonies of millions and flies astonishingly fast and high, a wonderful contrast to our quiet garden bats.
5 · Habitats to explore
The places bats feed and shelter: woodland, hedgerows that act as flight-paths through the dark, and water where some bats skim low to scoop up insects.
Things to try
- Dusk bat-watch: on a still, warm evening, watch a garden, park edge, or open ground at dusk and tally where and when bats appear — over water, round a lamp, or high over the trees.
- Bat-detector listening: a simple bat detector turns the bats' too-high calls into clicks and chirps, so you can hear the invisible — and notice that different bats sound different.
- Make a bat box: design, build, and test a weatherproof box with the right narrow entry slit and a rough inside for little feet to grip, then find a safe, high, sheltered spot for it.