Protecting the guardians of the dark

Last month, the ruins of Tughlaqabad in Delhi served as a backdrop to a unique morning walk.

- Avantika Bhuyan

Bats found in a tunnel in Bengaluru.

(COURTESY BAT CONSERVATION INDIA TRUST)

A set of naturalists and researchers urged a group of walkers to look beyond the built heritage, lift their gaze up to the dark crevices and holes and explore the world of bats within. As part of another session that very week, at Sunder Nursery, a team from World Wide Fund for Nature-India with Rohit Chakravarty, bat researcher at the Centre for Wildlife Studies, got a group of people to spend the evening listening to and identifying bat calls, so that they could understand the behaviour and role of bats in the environment. Using bat detectors and acoustic devices, the participants listened to and interpreted bat vocalisations in real time.

These sessions opened up the eyes of city dwellers to bats, while breaking myths around them and making scientific information more accessible. Little did we know that Delhi's monuments, gardens and parks are home to 15 species of bats, from tiny pipistrelles that sleep inside crevices in our homes, to the Flying Foxes often seen flying over Janpath, to the mouse-tailed bats that throng monuments. You will find them in domes, cracks and abandoned chambers of heritage structures or in tiled roofs, open pipes and holes in the walls of buildings.