There are two types of bats at Guestwick: Common Pipistrelles and Natterer’s. They roost high up in the rafters.<\/p>\n
The Pipistrelles emerge first, flying around for a few minutes, before squeezing out through minute gaps around the church door.<\/p>\n
The Natterer’s come out a little later, preferring to exit through small holes in the roof to get outside and find food.<\/p>\n
Without the help of the specialist cameras, the bats are near impossible to spot, lost in the darkness.<\/p>\n
About a third of the churches surveyed in the study had no idea that bats were living there.<\/p>\n
But in others, their presence was much more noticeable. Bats can be messy houseguests.<\/p>\n
“They’re lovely, but they’re problematic too,” says Graeme Peart from St Margaret’s Church, Saxlingham, just a few miles from Guestwick.<\/p>\n
He’s responsible for the upkeep of the church – and says the bats started to become a nuisance about 15 years ago.<\/p>\n
“There’s the urine, the droppings,” he says. “One time there was a carpet leading up to the altar that became absolutely sodden with urine and droppings and had to be thrown away. They also destroyed the brass work.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are two types of bats at Guestwick: Common Pipistrelles and Natterer’s. They roost high up in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-235774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}