Bats

Stretford twilight 

After a busy day with errands and a quiet day in the garden (note to self: get more sunflower seeds) I thought I'd potter down to the station to see if I could repeat yesterday's successful bat hunt. 

Just after sunset, while the light was still good, I walked up to the Liverpool-bound platform, thinking that the combination of station lighting and trees might attract large moths and so attract bats. It certainly attracted large moths: a few large underwings flitted by and an old lady moth shot close by my left ear, I forget how huge they are. I thought I caught another in the corner of my eye and turned in time to see a small bat fly through a gap in the trees. Although I couldn't identify it it was definitely way too small to be a noctule. 

I hung around and had no further luck so I was walking out of the station when another or the same small bat shot past and started hawking over the field. This time I was picking it up on the bat detector, reassuring 55kHz Geiger counter noises as it swooped low over my head. Then I noticed that while one was over my head another was circling round an area a couple of dogs were running round. Two soprano pipistrelles, I'm quite happy with that. I watched them flying jerky figures of eight in the dwindling light before going home and seeing if I could pick them up in the back garden (I couldn't).

It's going to be a long time before I get enough records to start making sense of the bat life round here, if I ever do at all. Early days…