The SRI joins the Barking Riverside Halloween Party

On 31st October, the SRI’s Caroline Nash and Paula Vandergert joined the fun at Barking Riverside as residents took part in pumpkin carving, colouring and a fancy dress competition to celebrate Halloween.

Figure 1. Barking Riverside community Jack-o’-lantern designs (Image © Sustrans, the Barking Riverside Scouts group and community leader Yvonne Thomas).

The event took place at Barking Riverside’s community garden and was organised by Sustrans, the Barking Riverside Scouts Group and community leader Yvonne Thomas. Caroline was invited to take the children on a bat walk around the area. She got to show the children how a bat detector works and talked to them about the behaviour and habitat of bats.

Figure 2. Day of the Dead colouring fun (Image © Sustrans, the Barking Riverside Scouts group and community leader Yvonne Thomas).

Contrary to popular belief, bats are not flying mice, but are in fact mammals that are more closely related to humans than rodents. Unlike mice, bats are quite long-lived and typically have only one baby a year, which is born in the summer and feeds on its mother’s milk until it becomes independent at around 6 weeks old. The scientific name for bats is Chiroptera, which means ‘hand wing’, and is derived from the fact that a bat’s wing is a highly modified hand.  This adaptation means that bats can fly, and they are the only mammals capable of true flight. Flight enabled bats to exploit food resources not available to other mammals, and being nocturnal, they avoid competition for food resources with birds, as well as reducing their risk of predation. All 18 species of bat in the UK feed solely on invertebrates. Despite the phrase ‘blind as bat’, bats in fact are not blind and have fairly good vision. To help them ‘see’ in the dark, bats use echolocation; they emit high frequency calls and then listen to all the echoes as the sound bounces back off objects. In the way that we see light reflected from objects, bats see sound reflected from their surroundings; they build up a picture, like a mind map, from listening to the echoes, and this system is so sensitive that it enables bats to detect tiny insects in pitch black conditions. Most ultrasound bat calls are beyond the range of human hearing, so we need a bat detector to convert them to a frequency that we can hear.

Figure 3. A brown long-eared bat (Image © Caroline Nash, UEL).

Caroline has recorded five species of bat at Barking Riverside. All three UK species of pipistrelle bat, common, soprano and Nathusius’ pipistrelle have been recorded over the Rivergate Centre, along with noctule and Leisler’s, two of the UK’s ‘big’ bats. Common and soprano pipistrelles are the commonest and smallest UK bat species; weighing the same as a 20p coin, they can consume as much as 3,000 insects in one night. They mostly eat mosquitoes, and so are nature’s free pest controllers. The larger Nathusius’ pipistrelle was rarely recorded in Britain, but the London Bat Group on behalf of the National Nathusius’ Pipistrelle Project has identified London as a UK hotpot for this species. The small resident UK population is joined in the autumn by migratory individuals from Europe, who fly here to hibernate for the winter. A ringing scheme has shown that one Nathusius’ bat flew a massive 1,499 km from Latvia to London, an amazing journey for an animal that weighs the same as £1 coin!

Whilst bats are strongly associated with Halloween, Caroline explained to the residents at Barking Riverside that unfortunately this is not a great time of year to try to see them. As temperatures become colder in autumn, insects become harder to find, so bats begin to undergo longer periods of torpor, a type of deep sleep, to save energy. Eventually as winter arrives their food becomes very scarce and bats enter into hibernation, greatly slowing their metabolic rate to reduce energy expenditure. So whilst we were all getting chilly during our Halloween bat walk at Barking Riverside, the bats were sensibly staying out of the cold and sleeping in their roosts.

Figure 4. TURAS community engagement around Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) green infrastructure design at Barking Riverside (Image © Paula Vandergert, UEL).

The bat walk was part of the ongoing informal activities the SRI engages in with residents at Barking Riverside. Paula has worked with residents to understand the local innovative SuDS features and wildlife, as well as arranging for planting guidance to be given when residents were first starting work on the community garden.  Caroline and Paula have taken residents up on the Rivergate Centre green roof to explain the role of green roofs as part of the wider SuDS for the development, and to understand the important local wildlife Caroline has identified as part of her PhD research under the TURAS programme.

To learn more about SRI’s engagement at Barking Riverside, follow the links below:

George Carey Primary School gets growing

Water voles return to Barking Riverside

The circus – and TURAS – comes to Barking Riverside

By Paula Vandergert and Caroline Nash