Eleven members and former members turned up at the south end of Sefton Park at 8pm. It was a perfect evening for bats dry, warm and still. Three of us had bat detectors, so we set them to different frequencies and stolled along the west side of the lake and up to the café, detecting nothing. We spotted the Little Grebes, though, which was a first for some of the group. On the way back south we made detour up the stream to the east, where we heard the call of a Tawny Owl and Terry spotted a probable Daubenton’s bat over the narrow waterway.
The clickings from the detectors grew more frequent on the east side of the lake, some very fast, like the rude noise called a “raspberry”. Dave Hardy though those were Pipistrelles, but we didn’t see them. After some people had left, the remaining five or six of us saw and detected several more probable Daubenton’s bats over the lake, flying low and fast through a patch of pale reflected light from the sky. The clicks from the detectors were all around us now, and we turned to the lakeside trees and lit up the trunk of a pine with our torches. At least two bats were flying around at head height, clicking in the 45-50 kHz range. After a quick consultation of the FSC guide, we thought these might have been Natterer’s bats.
No Noctule bats were seen or detected, although they have been seen in Sefton Park in previous years.
A few nice pictures of British bats and their habitats are here: