Te Radar's Rant: Bats about bats

Tiny treasures: New Zealand's native bats are both charming and elusive. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The fact that a bat is not technically a bird shouldn’t preclude it from sneaking in the back door for the Bird of the Year competition.

I am launching an audaciously pre-emptive strike on the 2014 Bird of the Year competition by nominating our native bats, or pekapeka. All of them. By which I mean the two species known to still exist and, optimistically, the one they haven't seen since 1967.

This may seem problematic to many, and not just because one of them is most likely extinct.

But bats should not be discriminated against in this populist bird beauty contest simply because they don't lay eggs and aren't exactly feathered. Have you seen a battery hen recently?

Some of our bats even sing. What could be more birdlike? Towards the end of summer male short-tailed bats assemble and attempt to woo lady bats with prolonged bouts of bat-song.

There's an emptiness inside me when I consider the possibility that I could die before I ever hear the love song of the bat.

Our bats are the only mammalian creature to set foot here prior to the arrival of man. And it's that setting their feet here that's a part of what makes them so unique.

The short-tailed bat is the only bat species that spends most of its awake-time strolling about on the ground, with its leathery wing membranes neatly folded up like umbrellas.

Technically they use their elbows as feet, rather than their little hands, which I imagine makes seeing them scuttling about a joy to behold.

Like many people I may have seen a bat and never realised. Most people seeing something flying past at dusk may well assume it's a tardy bird, late home to roost. This constant mistaking of them for their avian counterparts is yet another argument for their inclusion in BOTY.

If you want to know what you are looking for, take a 30 cm ruler and lay it across your thumb. Assuming you have an average sized thumb then what you have is a fairly good indication of the size and wingspan of our bats.

They resemble winged mice with longer legs and bigger ears. They are delightfully mythical. Unfortunately they may also become the things of legend, given how endangered they currently are.

It's because of our bats that I am also currently on the lookout for the Wood Rose, or Hades Flower, a parasitic native plant even rarer than the bats themselves. In Maori it is known as either pua o te reinga , the "flower of the underworld" or waewae atua, the "feet of gods". They are beautifully evocative names to describe a plant whose nectar exudes a musky scent said to be similar to mammalian sweat.

Doesn't that just sound positively enticing? It works on bats though, as they are the plant's main pollinator. I hope to inhale its heady aroma before it, too, goes the way of the greater short-tailed bat - into oblivion.

I have a particular affinity with bats. Like them I alternate long periods of torpor with short bursts of activity. The shorter the better, really. From now on many of those moments of activity will be consumed with attempted bat watching.

I am even contemplating installing a belfry. Then I will simply need to figure out how to lure bats there. Should building consents allow I will even install a bell, purely for aesthetic reasons of course, as I wouldn't want to scare any of the bats away.

With it completed I will then take any accusations of my having bats in said structure as a compliment, and a triumph for environmentalism. Now, if only I can succeed in having them recognised as worthy competitors for the title of Bird of the Year.

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