Raisin Rabbit to the rescue!

Noctule at Sussex Bat Hospital

Not a spaniel

Today I am on the Bat Conservation Trust's National Bat Helpline, helping rescue bats that are in trouble.  (Not trouble as in they have been naughty, I mean dangerous trouble).  Calls are coming in from all over the country about grounded bats and injured bats and bats in houses: scarey stuff!  Some need to get to bat hospital as quickly as possible.  Being a spaniel, I have nerves of steel and am quite calm under pressure - ideally suited to this work and to bat detection generally.  Sadly, this is not true of all dogs.

The family way

My mum

Rottie

One of my brothers - I've got two brothers and two sisters - who is called Rottie, lives with our mum not far from me.  After training school this morning I went to visit them and we had a lovely time despite the warm temperature.  Mummy has had her hair cut short but me and Rots got very hot and we weren't allowed to cool off in the lake for some silly reason to do with its smell.

Bats usually have only one baby a year, and their mummy gives them milk for about three weeks until they are big enough to fly and catch their own food.  When it's time to mate, male bats give out special calls to let the females know where they are, and possibly to warn off other males. Some do this from a prominent roosting place in a tree or on the side of a building. Others fly up and down the same route, calling as they fly. These calls are often low-pitched, almost audible to humans. This means that the sound will travel further, so advertising the bat to a wider audience.  The males hope any females passing may be attracted and pay them a visit. (More from the Natural History Museum).

The mating happens in the Autumn, but it's a bit early in the year for baby bats at the moment - June, July and early August is the time to look out for them.  Considering dogs are born about 9 weeks after mating, that's a long time for a bat to be pregnant, and this is a very interesting thing I will explain another time when I have done some more research, as it's very clever how bats organise it.  I am too young to have babies myself, which I am pleased about.

Baby bats are very small and have greyish fur, although if it is very young, like this one, it won't be fully furred.

International Raisin

Raisin Rabbit, Bat Detective at 6 months

I am six months old today and wondering if it's time for a hair cut now the warmer weather is here cos I do get a bit hot when I run around a lot.  Tomorrow I am going to see my mum and my brother in Drinkstone and will discuss it with them.

Just a tick

It's been a busy week: got my first tick (see pic, it looked like this but I gave my one to the vet for his bug collection), which didn't particularly bother me except it was hard to get off and we had to use pliers in the end.  And I also got a rabies jab so I can go abroad later in the year to look for mouse-eared bats and stuff.  Bats get ticks of the Argus and Ixodes genera, apparently. 

Greater mouse-eared bat - very rare in the UK

Bat box checking in Thetford Forest

Fallow deer

Yesterday I went out with the Suffolk Bat Group looking at some bat boxes in Thetford Forest. You can't believe how many trees there are in the forest - it would take forever to sniff them all but I did my best. The boxes have been put up in groups of six trees - three per tree, facing south-east, south-west and north to get different levels of heat from the sun - and we checked 18 groups, a lorra lorra boxes!  We travelled between the sites, across the bicycle trails, forestry tracks and fire roads, in a small convey of cars throwing up the dust like a safari but without lions. We did see some fallow deer though, and an adder slough (skin), and a badger set. 

Noctule

Brown long eared

Each box was checked for roosting bats, and we found 86 in total - one noctule, three pipistrelles and 82 brown long-eared bats. They were taken carefully from the boxes and shown to Uncle Arthur to determine the species, sex and whether they were adult or immature.  Brown long eareds (or BLEs as proper bat detectives call them) are my favourite bats at the moment, cos I have got quite long ears as well.  BLEs tuck their ears under their arms when they are relaxing.

We put the sleepy bats back in the boxes but lots just flew off to find the boxes themselves.  Uncle Arthur says they don't mind being disturbed by us, but nobody else should do it.

Hello

Try and spot the rabbit in this picture

Hello everyone and welcome to my website.  Let me start by saying don't be mislead by the name; I am not a rabbit, I am all dog. My human thinks it's amusing to call me Raisin Rabbit because I like to eat grass, dig holes, and run in a slightly hopping way sometimes.  Humans can be very silly.

Wrong

The other important thing to note is that I am a real bat detetective but I can't fly - I get asked this a lot.  Bats are the only mammals that can fly.  It is silly to think of dogs flying.

Strange little flying animal (at rest)

 This website is all about my adventures with bats, those strange little animals that fly about at night when most of us are asleep dreaming about chasing our friends and biting their ears.