Huw Jenkins goes bat counting at Cobdens Hotel in Capel Curig.
As the sun goes down on a midsummer night's eve in Snowdonia there's a strange bunch of people lurking outside Cobdens Hotel. Reeking of Jungle Formula, garbed in midge-proof hats and clutching 'clickers', those gadgets used on planes to count the passengers, and gazing intently skywards. This is the annual count of the Pips (Pipistrelles) resident in the hotel roof, one of the UK's largest colonies of bats.
It's that time of year when the baby Pips are born. Mating took place the previous autumn and the males have gone elsewhere. In the late spring the females, taking account of the weather forecast, synchronise their biorhythms to begin gestation and give birth at the same time. What they are aiming for is a communal birth coinciding with the maximum availability of midges. An adult eats its way through 3,000 a night so it's as well to have a plentiful supply.
The group stands guard with each person allocated a stretch of roof to watch. The Pips squeeze out through gaps beneath the gutters or bargeboards.
Just after 9pm the first Pip takes off into the dusk and a distinctive click registers her departure. A few more follow from different sections and all is going well until near disaster, it starts to rain. Bats have a high metabolic rate with a body temperature much higher than ours. The impact of the rain is that they cool down very quickly and must beat a hasty retreat back to the warm roost. This calls for quick arithmetic, for each returning bat you need to discount the corresponding number of departures. Clickers don't have a minus button.
The rain eases off and the midges are out en masse. Air traffic control gets busy and the trickle of bats turns into a torrent. From one particular hole there are bats emerging every couple of seconds - must be British bats with a very well organised queue behind the bargeboards.
As dusk turns to nightfall the departures slow right down and bats start returning to suckle their young. The count is deemed complete and the strange group is allowed into the hotel lobby where the seven clickers are added up to give the grand total of 1,288. Since recording first began in 1995 the numbers have fluctuated between 900 and 1,500 and this year is 400 up on the previous year, so all seems well with the community.
A final piece of trivia: Frank Cobden knew a thing or two about bats. Playing for Cambridge in 1870 he demolished the Oxford University batsmen with a hat-trick. Twenty years later he went on to buy a hotel in Capel Curig called Tan y Belch. Passers by from England must have assumed this was a reflection on the catering. Shortly after the hotel was renamed Cobdens.
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