Several months ago we were contacted by Kathy Hinde an audio visual artist based in Bristol and asked us to organise a bat walk. Her reason was an unusual one. She is about to work with Bedford Creative Arts on a musical project, which is using bat echolocation as a starting point. She has already had meetings with Prof. Gareth Jones at Bristol University. She is fascinated by the ways that bats alter their calls in different environments and different circumstances and wanted to invite Bedford Creative Arts to experience bats first hand. This included several of the choir who will be performing the work.
Kathy Hinde ( in a striped top) with members of Bedford Creatuie Arts Photo Jude Hirstwood.
It was a clear evening and we were a bit worried about the wind, but we saw Danny Fellman leaving from a 12 hour shift, who reassured us by telling us just how good the bats had been on Friday night. He was not wrong. We explained that it might be tricky to find bats in this wind.We need not have worried, even before it gt dark pipistrelles were flying around calling loudly. People had an excellent and noisy experience. Later a Noctule paid us a visit. The winds were too strong for the Daubenton’s to be on the lake, so we tried the finger lakes. However, if the Daubenton’s were there we couldn’t hear them above the cacophony of bat calls. What we didn’t hear was pipistrelle social calls – obviously they had decided to feed rather than flirt.For the same reason we cannot be sure that we heard a serotine. Evey-one had a great time and it will be interesting to hear what Kathy and co come up with.