We were lucky as the bat walk took place on a warm, dry evening, a perfect night for bats to hunt and feed on flying insects. We had hopes of seeing bats and we were not disappointed.
We had permission to take people around Mayow Park starting at dusk and the gates were kept open till the walk finished.
Iain Boulton, our bat expert, gave an introduction about bats in general, about bats in the UK and pipistrelle bats in Mayow Park specifically.
One of the FOMP committee had drawn a diagram showing how bats have 5 fingers, the thumb at the top and four that connect to their wings. Bats are the only mammal that can truly fly.
Iain showed how to use a bat detector to 'hear' pipistrelles, our local bats. He explained that to 'hear' bats we tune the bat detector to the best listening frequency for the type of bat. For common pipistrelles we set the detector to around 50kHz
Most of the visitors didn't have a bat detector but Iain brought some to lend out.
It wasn't long before we heard the bats (using the detectors) and saw them flying around catching insects in the air. The moon looked down on us through the trees.
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