There's an animal at Strumpshaw Fen that can eat 3,000 insects in one night, lives for up to 16 years, and is barely bigger than a human's thumb. Can you guess what it is?
If you visit at dusk you'll see lots of them - I'm talking about pipistrelles, Britain's smallest and most common bat. September is a great month for bat-watching and Strumpshaw Fen is a great place to do it. In the last two weeks we've had three guided walks looking for bats. I was lucky enough to lead the children's bat walk - the children were brilliant at spotting the bats swooping between the trees and over our heads. Using the bat detectors we tuned into the hunting calls of soprano pipistrelles (a higher pitched call than the common pipistrelles). One sharp-eyed youngster spotted some larger bats flitting among the smaller pipistrelles beside the meadow. We tuned our dials to a lower frequency and discovered that these big guys were noctules - one of the country's biggest bats.
There are 18 species of bat in Britain, and 7 of them have been recorded at Strumpshaw Fen. Common and soprano pipistrelles, noctules and Daubenton's bats can be seen most easily - look for Daubenton's skimming over the water. Brown long-eared bats, serotines and Natterer's bats are harder to spot, but are seen and heard occasionally. The best spot for bat-watching at Strumpshaw is the fingerpost between the woods and meadow - stand there at dusk and they'll come swooping over your head. Don't leave it too long though - they'll soon be hibernating!