Arriving at RSPB St Aidan’s as the sun began to set was not the usual time I get there. However, I was excited to be coming on a nocturnal guided walk! We were met by a mixture of staff and volunteers and started off by watching the barn owls silently hunting along the hillside while we waited for everyone to gather.
The walk leader started off explaining a little bit about the history of the site and how it has changed from an opencast mine into a nature park in such a short space of time. The dragline ‘Oddball’ standing by the carpark and Little Owl Café as a monument to the local history. We were also able to witness the kestrel adults coming in to feed their chicks who were calling from the nest high in the machine- one of the Nature Park’s star species. Then we were handed out bat detectors and off we went with the sun setting behind us.
We walked down to Lowther Lake first. Here we learnt about the different ways that different bats catch insects. Daubenton's bats catch insects by scooping them up in their feet, which they hold like a basket as they fly low over the water! We looked out for these over Lowther Lake but were soon distracted by the call of a noctule bat coming through the bat detectors. These are the largest bats in Britain and easily could have been mistaken for a swift or starling as they flew high above us. But the unmistakable clicks from the bat detectors made the identification easy.
Noctule bats like to fly over woodland and so we walked along further to see if we could spot some more and we were not disappointed. As we reached the woodland, we began to pick up more types of bats as well as the noctule bats. Common pipistrelle and soprano pipistrelle bats flew over our heads between the trees. It was darker here, but fixing your eyes on the gaps in the trees meant that you could spot them as they flew past. Our guide led us through the woods to a spot where the bats were flying from the open fields, over our heads and into the woods. I could have stayed here for hours. It was the perfect spot for watching and listening to them.
Even as we turned to go back up to the Little Owl Café there were still bats flying over and around us. Their impressive echolocation meant that they swerved away from us long before we got close. And we could just pick them out against the starry sky. It was an amazing evening, the wildlife was amazing to see and it felt special to be on the site when there were hardly any other people around.
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Written by: Peggy Cook
Image credits: Peggy Cook