Standing in a damp, twilit forest on Monday night, our art editor Alun and I both froze as we spotted a female roe deer, watching us, motionless, amid the trees only a few metres away. Spooked by our eye contact, she suddenly shot into the undergrowth and melted silently away, leaving us enraptured at the magic of the moment. It was a bit different from my average Monday evening, for sure.
This week, we hosted Mark, Jack and Emma from the team at Sandy, who all travelled up to spend two days with us here in Bristol, where Nature's Home and the other RSPB magazines are produced.
And on Monday, after a long but exciting day around the boardroom table, we all decided to gatecrash Mark’s twilight bat-spotting mission up in the woods around Clifton Gorge.
We spent a pretty exciting couple of days in the boardroom. Here we are in full brainstorm mode… watch out for the results in Nature’s Home next year! Meanwhile, back to the forest…
To get to the National Trust-owned Leigh Woods, we walked across the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge, built in the mid 19th century by Isembard Kingdom Brunel. It spans the mighty Avon Gorge at a dizzying height, and gives fantastic views across the city in one direction and into the densely forested gorge in the other.
We meandered through the woods around the edge of the gorge as night drew in, exploring different paths. Eventually, we emerged into a twilit clearing – and suddenly there were bats everywhere. Mark produced his handheld bat detector, tuned in to their known frequencies, and - for the first time in my life - I could clearly hear their clicks and squeaks as they flapped past, sometimes circling around us, sometimes racing to and fro along a line of trees.
By day, we produce your RSPB magazines. By night, we wander wildly in the woods…
We were hoping to spot lesser horseshoe bats, known to live around the gorge, but we mostly identified whiskered bats (we think!) and soprano pipistrelles. They were all awesome, though. Sometimes we saw them before we heard them, sometimes it was the other way around, but it was fantastic to be so close to these wild creatures of the night. Often, they’d drop and flap along close to the ground and once, it looked like one almost flew into Alun’s knee as he walked.
Just as our eyes were growing accustomed to the growing darkness, we emerged onto an escarpment to be dazzled by this sparkling view of the Clifton Bridge, slightly below us, glittering like a diamond necklace in the night. A fresh breeze blew off the Gorge, and we were all compelled to stop and admire the view.
Civilisation, visible from the bat-filled wilderness of Clifton Gorge. Better in the flesh than in this pic!
As we turned back, the night swept in and we all needed torches to find our footing. This made it harder to see the bats, but their mysterious squeaks and chattering (audible only via the bat detector) accompanied us all the way back to the gate.
We all got home late, but were re-invigorated for the morning’s meeting - in which we planned the Spring issue of Nature’s Home! I’m hoping we can find a bit of room in it for a bat or two… watch this space!
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