Going bats

Windmill Gardens is only ten minutes' walk from where I live, but it really isn't somewhere I go very often, these days.  Last time I went was to the Bread and Beer festival in May 2018.  But tonight there was a bat walk!

It's been on my bucket list for years, doing a bat walk, but somehow I never seem to be in the right place at the right time.  I've missed a couple in Windmill Gardens simply because we were away when they happened.  There was a last-minute panic when I was asked to do grandmother duty today instead of tomorrow (which I couldn't have done anyway, but the Swan Whisperer would have done it), but luckily the Boy had football training at 17:30, which meant I was able to be home by 18:15 in time to have a snack and go straight out again.

There were already a dozen or so people gathered in the Gardens when I arrived - it is only a very small park - but more arrived as time went on, and I think there were probably 40 people or so when the evening commenced.  Three of them were children, about the age of our grandsons, but these ones were all girls. The Swan Whisperer was there for the talk, but he had a meeting so couldn't stay.  It began with a talk by Dr Iain Boulton, who is Lambeth's Environmental Compliance Officer, which basically means he is responsible for knowing what wildlife exists in Lambeth, and making sure it is encouraged to stay there (I did want to ask him whether he could help with the foxes creating unwanted havoc in the garden here, but didn't get a chance).  He explained about bats.  Bats, of course, are the only truly flying mammal, with their hands adapted to make wings.  But they are really mammals - warm-blooded, and give birth to live young, which they suckle.  There are many species of bats in this country, but the ones they'd expected to see most often in Windmill Gardens are pipistrelles.  All British bats are insectivores, and they hibernate in winter.  September is a brilliant time to see them, since they are active at sunset and sunrise, rather than in the depths of the night.  Each bat eats about 1,000 insects a night, so a healthy bat population means a healthy insect population.

Dr Boulton then handed out bat detectors, and explained how to use them.  You pointed them at trees rather than into the sky or towards the ground.   All this time, the sun was setting, and although at first we pointed our detectors in vain, after about 5 minutes they burst into a cacophony of clicks and, when you knew where to look, you could follow the bats swooping round the park, between the trees.  As the evening wore on, they came more and more out into the open - I could swear one passed within inches of my face.  I've seen bats before, of course - they come over the lake in Sussex, and I've seen them around Villard-de-Lans - but in inner London?  I really hadn't expected we'd see so many, and of course it's not possible to tell whether these were the same  bats doing the rounds or several different ones, but there must have been a minimum of four or five. 

We are now wondering whether we can borrow a detector to see if there are any in the church gardens - bet there are! 

I didn't take any photos - the light was too poor, and anyway, the bats moved too fast - so here's a photo of the Oaks Bottom in Sussex, where we had tea yesterday.  Bet they have lots of bats there.....