Communication with Bats

I was making the most of the spring tide on Friday 18^th September and exploring a bit of the North Devon coast I hadn’t accessed before, via Mouth Mill, on the Hartland Coast. At low tide, midday, I found a shallow but very high cave under Windbury Head with 2 grand pillars of rock holding the cliff up at it’s entrance. The shallowness of the cavern meant I couldn’t photograph it from the back as I usually would so I snuggled up to the wall on the left-hand-side and started to make my constructed image, photographing the boulders at my feet first and moving along the floor and up the right-hand wall with my camera. As my Olympus E3 focuses it emits a high pitched sound; this sound attracted the bats, I’m assuming, as I made no sound and used no flash. The bats, (I’m rubbish at identifying them, bigger than those seen on the Tarka Trail South of Bideford, you could clearly see their ears!) 2 of them flew in formation around the inside of the cave mapping it, then back to the top, out-of-sight, then after seconds, came out again and flew lower down until they were within a few feet of me; then they were gone taking exactly the same flight path back to their roost. I had stayed still all of this time, happy to watch them, and didn’t take anymore pictures whilst they were flying; I was shooting at 1/10 of a second anyway so I couldn’t have photographed them. It seemed as though as soon as they had discovered that it wasn’t another bat making the noise they were happy to go back to bed. I finished taking photographs and didn’t see them again.

It’s unusual to find bats in these sea caves because at high tide the sea is well inside of them and the surf is pounding up the sides and back. In fact, it’s rare to find any life in these places because the environment at high tide is so violent, only the most stubborn limpet will cling onto these walls. However, in this cave, the ceiling was so high, a good 30 feet, and with plenty of jagged crevices to make a home for a bat. I’ve only found bats in one other cave in the cliffs here, and that one was always dry.