With this bad weather, bats are taking every opportunity to dash out and feed. Likewise bat deprived bat group members , looking out of their window and seeing an absence of rain, rushed out to their cars and drove to Sandy Warren last night, in an attempt to get a bat fix.
Waiting for sunset not buses. Photo Jude HIrstwood
With record numbers turning out (15 of us) the car park was jam packed and we subdivided into two groups. Most of the group headed off to walk round the site to see what they could find.
The Gatehouse Photo Jude HIrstwood
Four of us stayed at the gatehouse in an attempt to find the exit points from the Gatehouse which houses a brown long eared bat roost. This was made somewhat harder by a security light which turned off ever 30 seconds for 15 seconds before turning itself on again. We failed to spot any emerging bats, but brown long ears are notoriously sneaky and quiet. We did hear some soprano pipistrelles and a single common pipistrelles, a passing serotine and several very noisy Noctules. The group walking round the park found large numbers of common and soprano pipistrelles and heard the serotine as well as a Myotis.
The three new members seemed to enjoy themselves on their first excursion and even got to hear what the call of a horseshoe bat was like, courtesy of Bill who had a recording with him. This caused some of us near heart failure as we have no horseshoe bats in Bedfordshire – for a brief instant we thought we had an amazing new record
