More bats in the wood

Earlier this week we went up to the wood for dinner with our friends John and Helen, who live just opposite us. After dinner we settled round the camp fire and once it was dark got the bat detector out. We heard and saw far more bats than last time, we think there were at least three at once feeding in the coupe we cut two years ago. Perhaps there are more insects there than in other parts of the wood? Or maybe it's just easier to hunt there, with fewer large trees in the way at the moment?

Anyway, here's a video. You might want to watch it in high quality mode, so it will take a bit longer to download, but if you look carefully you'll see the bats silhouetted against the fading light in the sky - watch out for them when the bat box is making more noise.


Talking of night-flying creatures, we also saw three Puss Moths outside our front door, two of them mating:

That's all for now, but we have some exciting news about the bird box we put up coming shortly...

Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.

Batbox bat detector

After work on Thursday we went up to the wood to cut some logs to length to make a raised bed at home to grow vegetables in, but also took the opportunity to take the Batbox bat detector we've borrowed from a friend and stay until dusk to look for bats.

First though, I need to tell you about the new stuff that's growing. Out in the wayleave the broom is now flowering, which must be a treat for the insects:
Inside the wood the chestnut is coming on well, though it still has a long way to go:
The oaks are also beginning to thicken their canopies:
We noticed something exciting about the oaks. We'd been told a year ago that when we thinned the oaks that the ones left would grow to fill the space over a period of time, and here's the start of it:it's not just in one place, it's right up the tree, on all the trees:
Also, in the gaps left on the ground due to the thinning and coppicing, there's grass springing up where before there was bare earth:
The bluebells in our wood have finally caught up with Sweep Wood, which gets a bit more light:
We also saw this strange bug. Some kind of caterpillar perhaps?Anyway, once we'd had a look around and loaded up the logs we were taking home, we sat down with a hot drink and waited for dusk. (I took this photo of the kelly kettle using a 6 second exposure, taking advantage of the new tripod and wireless remote control I bought for the camera)
Here's the bat detector:It works by converting the ultrasound frequencies of the bats into something we can hear. There's a dial you can tune to pick up different frequencies (20-120 kHz), allowing you to identify different bat species - though we're not expert enough to do this! Here's a little video of me testing it with some keys (jangling keys emit ultrasound!), and then recordings of a couple of bats:

Next post coming up - making the raised bed we took the logs back for.
Mike

Click here to read the rest of this post.