Nora Batty

When we came home last night we found a bat in our porch.  I think she is rather cute but others don't agree.  I suppose like the original Nora Batty, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.



A Common Pipistrelle bat



I asked the UK Bat Conservation Trust and  Rosalind Buckley thinks it is a Common Pipistrelle bat. 

You can read more about them in this Wikipedia article and there are more pictures on this google images page .

All species of bats are protected against disturbance by law in the UK, even just by using flash photography.  Nora showed no reaction to our presence at all but she had gone by the next morning.

In France legislation dating from 2007 also exists to protect bats (l'arrêté ministériel du 23 avril 2007 relatif à la protection des mammifères selon l'article L.411-1 du Code de l'Environnement) and I probably infringed the law by taking the photograph.  Nineteen species are on the French red list of endangered species and thirteen of those are on the World red list.  

There is no shortage of moths and insects around us so I hope that other conditions are favorable to enable them to breed and flourish here.