a bat flying through barn doors

Rare photos reveal U.K.’s disappearing ‘whispering’ bats

As meadows vanish, so too do gray big-eared bats, a species so elusive that few photographs of it exist.

A gray big-eared bat (Plecotus austriacus) emerges from its roost in a barn in Devon, England. It's the rarest bat still breeding in the U.K. today. They're are sensitive to light, so the photographer used red light filters to avoid disturbing them.

In an old stone barn on an organic farm in Devon, England, live lesser horseshoe bats, noctule bats, whiskered bats, and more. Each night during the summer, they emerge from their maternal roost to hunt for moths, flies, and other insects. For nearly two months last summer, they had an audience.

A few nights a week, conservation photographer Neil Aldridge posted himself in the grassy courtyard nearby. One of his cameras pointed into the barn door and other pointed up into the night sky. Prepared to stay up all night, he configured his cameras to snap photos the instant a bat triggered a motion sensor.

If he was lucky, when he reviewed the photos later, Aldridge would find that he

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