27th September 2009 2009

I spent the weekend at Ripley with my family. We stayed at the Ripley Caravan Park, where our motorhome was parked beside a very busy duck-pond. There were many mallards and some especially tame moorhens, which walked around on the grass between the caravans showing no fear of people. I produced a few watercolour sketches of these and was fascinated by the size of their feet.

Summer doesn’t seem to be quite over yet but it is starting to feel like autumn. During my early morning cycle rides to work, I have been seeing grey partridges each morning on the cycle-track in the place where I see them every winter, and at the weekend large groups of long-tailed tits were feeding very noisily in trees around Ripley.

Whilst my young daughter and I were standing in local woods  a week ago we were showered with seed cases from beech trees and today we watched leaves raining down from some very tall beech trees near Mother Shipton’s Cave at Knaresborough..

Despite the signs of autumn, I listened to a chiffchaff singing from a goat willow by the duck-pond at Ripley.

A few days ago, I spent time observing bats at school with a group of pupils and another member of staff. We were using three ultrasonic detectors which I assembled about ten years ago using kits which used to be supplied by Maplin. They are more primitive than the ones which are now available commercially but they allow us to listen to the bats and to record some of the sounds.

To listen to the confusion of clicks made when several bats hunt in the same area, click here (555 kb). This recording of Daubenton’s bats was made at a local boating lake (Hemsworth Water Park), where bats feed over the water.

Conditions seemed to be favourable for bats - mild and calm - but we found only occasional individuals. I spent time watching one bat at dusk as it circled near a security light, hunting the insects attracted to the light.

If you would like to hear the ‘raspberry’ sound which a bat makes when its echolocation clicks become very close together as it closes in on a food item, click here (106 kB) to listen to a pipistrelle bat hunting at Ackworth School.

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