Philip Maber caught this interesting image at night on the 18th August. It shows interesting nocturnal activities of some of the Friends of Centurion Way participating in a walk to find bats.
A young bat enthusiast Francesca can be seen on the right of the image holding a bat detector and third from the right is Peter Etheridge who did a fantastic job leading the walk.
The walk started from Bishop Luffa Close at dusk. Immediately as we moved onto Centurion way Francesca detected bats with her detector. We all looked up and two bats could be clearly seen flying just above our heads in a figure of eight pattern!
Although it was difficult to see bats once night had fallen, the bat detectors told us the bats were still actively flying around. Peter told us most of the bats we detected were probably the Common Pipistrelle apart from one bat we detected with a distinctly different call. Peter thought that could be an example of Daubenton’s bat. A type of bat likes to hunt for small insects that gather over water so was probably commuting between hunting areas.
Many thanks to Peter Etheridge for a great evening on Centurion Way.
On behalf of the Friends of Centurion Way,
Mark Record