How bats use woodland

Coniferous, deciduous and mixed woodlands can all be home to bats if there are suitable places to roost or feed. Bats use woodland for different reasons, depending on bat species, the season and the type and size of woodland.

• In small to medium sized woodlands, noctules will use trees as roosts. However, they might forage up to 20km from the woodland at night.
• At the other extreme, Bechstein's bats will both roost and forage in a suitable woodland of 25 to 50 hectares or more in size, only rarely venturing further afield.
• Although Leisler's bats sometimes roost in houses in summer, they move to hibernate in woodland trees in winter. Greater and lesser horseshoe bats are unlikely to use trees as roosts but they frequently enter woodland to feed.
• Resident in woodland all year round, male pipistrelles establish temporary mating roosts in trees in late summer, where they will display to attract passing females.

Bats are also found in other structures within woodland, such as buildings, sheds and underground sites like mines and bunkers. Read more about bat habitats.