Fruit bats scratching at links to water (6)
I believe the answer is:
plumbs
'links to water' is the definition.
I can't judge whether this defines the answer.
'fruit bats scratching at' is the wordplay.
'fruit' becomes 'plum' (plum is a kind of fruit).
'scratching' suggests deleting specific letters (some letters are scratched out).
'bats' with 'at' removed is 'bs'.
'plum'+'bs'='PLUMBS'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for plumbs that I've seen before include "Reaches or experiences, say the depths" , "Gets to the bottom of" , "Sounds" .)