View From the Shed by Shaun Finnie - ONCE IN A LIFETIME

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

Like many of you, I keep a year list. For those who don't know, this is a list of every bird that I've seen over the calendar year. It's a harmless way of adding a little self-competition to my birdwatching whereby I try to see more birds on this trip around the sun than the last. This is a great incentive to travel to different locations in search of new birds to add to the list. After all, if I only look in one place then the number of birds I could potentially see is necessarily limited.

With this in mind I took a short trip away from Old Moor's Welcome Shed this week, up to the reservoirs in the hills above Sheffield. I was hoping to see a bird I hadn't seen yet this year, a Dipper. If you haven't seen these delightfully entertaining birds, then it's worth making the effort to find one. They're brown and white, about the size of a thrush and they are usually seen at the edge of flowing water. They feed by sticking their heads in the water and dislodging insects. They'll even swim underwater to root out their prey. I had a fantastic time mooching around the reservoir and woodlands and did indeed see my target bird, hunting in a stream beneath a bridge in its own trademark way. Tick, went my pen. My year list tally increased by one and my smile broadened a little. They're the kind of bird that brings about a smiley reaction, like Kingfishers or Skylarks. After a few hours' walk I returned to the same bridge and was surprised to see splashing and fluttering in the water, at exactly the same point as before. But this time it looked a little different, a little... wrong.

I raised my binoculars... and almost dropped them in shock. The creature in the river wasn't a Dipper. It wasn't even a bird at all. It was much more sinister-looking than that. It was Eldritch. It was almost Lovecraftian. It was a small, dark Chiropteran mammal. It was lots of other things that make me appear to be a far cleverer writer than I actually am but most of all it was, to my complete astonishment, a bat. This is so unusual that it bears repeating. There was a bat, in a stream, in the middle of the day. And it was swimming.

Fair enough, as a swimmer it wasn't going to beat Adam Peaty over a hundred metres but neither was it in danger of drowning. And I bet Peaty wouldn't be as fast as he is on a diet of just insects. The unexpected little beast slowly but confidently used its wing membranes to pull itself through the water until it reached the shore and clambered up the rocks. It was an incredible sight, especially in the cloudy light of lunchtime.

A little research (and a chat with the reservoir's on-site warden) revealed it to be a Daubenton's bat, also known as the water bat. They hunt by flying close to the surface of streams or lakes and snatching up midges and other insects. Sometimes they will even dig their wings or tail into the water and scoop them off the surface. An obvious occupational hazard of this kind of feeding is that occasionally it will all go wrong and poor old batty will take an early bath. When that occurs they've evolved to be perfectly competent – if not particularly willing – swimmers. They aren't usually seen away from their roosts until twilight but if conditions are right and there are plenty of midges on the water surface, daytime hunting is not unheard of.

So a remarkably unusual combination of occurrences – the overcast weather on the day, the breeding cycle of the midges, the fast flow of the narrow stream where it would usually have been much wider and slower, the location of the bat's roost, the crash landing – all lead to this remarkable sight and I was incredibly fortunate enough to have witnessed it. It was a truly once-in-a-lifetime sighting.

Bats live quite happily around people as long as their roosts are left undisturbed. Maybe near where you live. Certainly near where I am. And, if you're lucky enough to see them, there are plenty of bats around the Dearne Valley. As well as a small colony of Daubenton's, the Old Moor reserve is home to Common Pipistrelle, Soprano Pipistrelle, Noctule and Natterer's bats. And we've even recently seen Dippers in our valley. It turns out that I needn't have travelled too far from my shed to see one after all.

If you decide to come and visit us then, truth be told, it's highly unlikely that you'll see a bat during our opening hours, especially not swimming. Our heron species might get an unusual treat if one did decide to take a dip. But these natural “once-in-a-lifetime” moments like the one I came upon happen every day. I know they do because people drop by the Welcome Shed to share their stories and their photos. They probably occur when you least expect them to but one thing's for sure; you won't see them by staying at home watching Bargain Hunt (other time-thief television shows are available).

So here's a sample of what's been seen at Old Moor this week. Might one of them provide your once-in-a-lifetime sighting?