Regular readers will now that the Nathusius at Priory have ben madly elusive this season. We pick them up on a detector but either they set a thunderstorm or a downpour on us, or they arrange for a Supermoon to scupper our chances. There was talk of not bothering this month, but Daniel Hargreaves was keen to come and so we set up three harp traps and lures and lures last night.
The moon was beautifully bright and we did doubt we would dcatch anyhing. In the early part of the evening we caught a total of 24 bats, but once the moon got into it stride we caught nothing, and so had to sit round talking and eating flapjacks.
But we didn’ t care because one of the bats we caught was a Nathusius.
We think he was a juvenile male ( It is very hard at thi stime of year to tell the juveniles from the adults). He was quite feisty but he was soon processed, ringed an fur clipped ( all under licence) He was even persuaded to pose or some pictures.
Who are you calling Feisty? Photo Daniel Fellman
Bob was able to point out the main diagnostic features, including its egg shaped penis. There was some hilarity when Hedj misheard this as “egg nog”. Methinks we may have a new in joke here)
Danny was over the moon as we have tried many times to catch a Nathusius ever since he heard one a number of years ago.
Tony wasn’t sad either as it was first live Nathusius he had seen in over twenty five yeara of batting
Jude was pleased that so many people were there to witness the event, especially for Antonio who had driven down from Huntingdon.
We also caught a very chubby female Daubenton’s who weighed in at 10.8 grams, who was obviously feeding up ready for hibernation
The Nathusius project protocol means we will be back in October, for one last look this year.