The finished bat, joined by two early efforts. The half-skeleton is the first wing-joint experiment, and the earless form in the background got through the wire work but died when the wing membrane shrank too much after being trimmed down.

Key ideas going forward: the copper washer in the hand allows the finger bones to slide smoothly instead of bending back and forth, but needed more room than shown here (added via the Whitney punch left from my armor-building days), and the membrane has the resilience to expand with the fully spread wings and shrink to near invisibility with the wings folded (cut in a single piece from a pair of nylon tights and felted through the body, making it more lifelike though less romantic than the bits of shibori silk pieced together for earlier fliers).

Not that I won’t keep using silk; it’s lovely – but there’s a reason all the web-winged creatures in the menagerie have been fantastical....