Bats active on the Park in July.

Sunset is only at about 9:15 PM at this time of year and bats will start to appear about 30 minutes later when it starts to get dusk. Waiting in the Park the other evening I was treated to a large group of rabbits hungrily feeding, a large fox cub and an adult Fox coming out of the Osier Bed and then a Barn Owl hunting over the grassland. Walking back along Oak Walk I monitored bat species using an Echometer Touch ultrasonic device which plugs into an iPad. The iPad records and analyses the bat calls and then even better identifies them for us. Shown below are the spectrograms of the four different types of bat that I recorded.

Bats are present in the Park for several reasons, firstly there are old trees which give them places to roost, the unimproved grassland which is rich in insects as food and the fact that we have cattle grazing and the cattle themselves attract insects which become food for the bats. The Friends will be holding a Bat Evening in September. We do it at this time of year because it gets dark at about 7:30 PM which means it does not make too late and evening for families and children. Details will be circulated later on.