Enthusiasm for sharing his delight and wonder concerning bats has taken Roger Havard to many different places. Anyone who has visited an outdoor wildlife festival in our county during the past 30 years is likely to have encountered him at the Hertfordshire and Middlesex Bat Group’s stall, introducing an admiring circle of children and adults to a tiny, live bat, held gently in his white-gloved hand. At events as far afield as Yorkshire or Alderney in the Channel Islands others could report similar experiences of his bat evangelism. Likewise, those attending Field Studies Council courses on bats when he has been the associate tutor.
But it is excited Hertfordshire children who are most likely to remember this remarkable man who came to their school to show them real bats and entertainingly talk about them. Infant, junior and secondary schools across the county have enjoyed the pleasure of Roger’s visits. (The live bats that he shows on these occasions are disabled, rescue animals – for example missing one wing. They are well cared-for and not suffering – but their injuries are such that they could never be released into the wild again.)
Alongside his educational work, the rescue and intensive-care service that members of the Bat Group provide for injured animals is the activity that gives Roger the greatest satisfaction. It is time-consuming work and it sometimes takes months to nurse a bat back to a stage where it can fly and feed itself again. “Releasing a bat that has been at death’s door is a very special thing. It can be a bit of a wrench to see them go,” he says. “But there’s also the elation!”
Photo: Roger Havard (left) receives his award from HNHS Secretary David Utting (©Tim Hill)
Roger is originally from the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales. A chemist and metallurgist by training, he moved from London to Hertfordshire, and his home since 1978 has been in Ware. His introduction to wildlife volunteering came through the HMWT and led to his decision to develop a specialism in bats. He even built his own bat detector. Observing Bat Group colleagues at public events, he eventually realised he had acquired enough knowledge to try educating others s himself.
He was Chair of the Herts and Middlesex Bat Group for a number of years. He has participated in the group’s important survey work, including radio-tracking which led to the discovery in 2011 of a nationally important breeding colony of Western Barbastelles in Hertfordshire . He holds various licences including as a Natural England Bat Roost Visitor. Discovering bats in residence is not always a welcome experience for unsuspecting homeowners, but Roger is proud of occasions when he has helped to negotiate a peaceful co-existence.
His educational work has led to appearances on radio and television, including BBC Countryfile and with the late Paul O’Grady (aka ‘Lily Savage’), who owned a farm with a colony of Pipistrelles. An early morning ‘live’ Breakfast TV transmission from a Soprano Pipistrelle roost at Stanstead Abbotts proved so popular that the director ordered a return slot later in the programme. He revels in the diversity of bats, their sophisticated adaptations to particular niches – and their unpredictability. “There is nothing you think you might know about them that they won’t go and do something else. They don’t read the books!”
Nothing, he adds, beats the experience of introducing children to the actual, living creatures while talking about their natural history. “What makes it worthwhile”, he says, “is the joy on little people’s faces, their excitement at learning something that their parents probably won’t know about when they tell them later. "