Is any one lucky enough to have Bats in their garden ?

Ambrose- put a bat box up this will encourage more.
We've put one up on the tree in the garden, hoping that this years young will find it when they get thrown out of their parents digs.

Once on a walk I saw a large butterfly, on closer inspection I realised it was a baby bat. It flew to a wall and slowly crawled up into a tiny crack at the top, all this in broad daylight.

Got some here too ,WILD WALES,had 1 in our bedroom 1 night ,had to chase it out before Mrs would let me back in bed.

Had some down cellar recently too,regularly see when out with dogs after dark.

bats in our front shed you can hear them scratching.

Yep, bats here also. Also a large colony of Natterer's Bats a few miles away – must go and see them before they hibernate!

I guess we have bats nearby. I have seen them flying around every now & again & the cat bought one into the house once!!

We thought first of all it was a dead leaf, until it unfolded it's wings and started crawling about the floor! Managed to get the cat out of the house & the bat then took off and hung itself from the rail that goes round our living room (tasteful (not) dado rail that previous owner put in).
It then started doing loops of the room before hanging from the rail again.
I had the computer on so got on the internet & found a bat expert based nearby (who'd have thought!!). I called them up, but they had settled down for the evening with a bottle of wine so were unable to come out & collect it. I explained that it was currently hanging on the wall & appeared to have a fairly large tear in it's wing.
The woman then proceeded to lecture me that it's an offence to hold a bat in captivity! I asked her if she would prefer me to give it back to the cat (the cat was well miffed we deprived her of her new toy!)

In the end she said it was probably OK to fly with the tear in the wing & to catch it and let it go. Catching it was difficult, but in the end we used a sieve. The bat seemed to be able to sense that something was there, but not exactly what & we managed to coax it into a box (which it did a few poos in).
I then walked it down the road to a large field & let it go…..it flew off & that was that!

Quite a fun evening!

Regularly see them zipping across our garden at dusk, you can only see them for a second sillhouetted against the sky they're so quick. I presume they live in the woods nearby.

One flew into my arm a few weeks back at the end of a nightride just down from The Cutting, twas a horrible creepy feeling knowing Id been touched by a bat. I love em flying about but dont want one tangled up in my sleeve.

can you encourage bats in surburban terraces? There aren't many trees down the back but i'd love to get some buzzing about

http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/encouraging_bats.html

I've a juvenile Common Pipistrelle in my office at the moment, he's going home tonight.

I once went on an organised bat watch.
The park ranger took a group of us into the woods. Out came his special microphone to pick up their noises and a large bright light.
It was really amazing seeing loads of them flying around.
Then we walked down to a nearby lake, where we watched daubenton bats skimming across the top of the water catching all the insects.

I came recommend at trip out if you have ( older children), it's great fun.
Mine was at Lyme park, near Stockport.

Our cat also brought one in a few months ago. Sat watching TV and heard this funny clicking, after a quick search found it under the table. I caught it in a shoe box while our lass looked on the web to find out what to do. It said to ring the local 'bat man'. He came around 2 days later, we kept it in a shoe box in the spare room. He went in for it but it had got out, finally found it, bit him twice. He left but haven't heard anything since. Never seen one flying around near us though.

Maybe linked, when we got our planning permission through for an extention the only condition was to stop work if we found bats. I searched all the related planning applications in the area and none mentioned bats.

Saw plenty of these in Australia recently:

Grey-headed flying fox: don't fancy being hit by one while on the bike, would be like being hit by a flying jack russell with a 1m+ wingspan. But cool creatures.