Bat Detecting!

Bat Detecting!

Posted 20 Jun 2008

The sunset on Friday 20th June was lovely and it made for a perfect evening of bat detecting! We went out, equipped with a bat detector, so that we could hear the echo-location of the bats (pipistrelles). It was a relief to see over 10 bats flying around as we were concerned the bat population was dwindling after only seeing 1 bat on previous bat-detecting occasions this year. As well as bats, we were also blessed with the antics of a circling curlew and a visitor for the puss cat. It really was a lovely evening and it was great to see and hear the bats. The echo-location sound that the bats make can be described as a clapping / clicking / raindrop noise and the frequency of the "pulses" increases rapidly when the bat flies in to catch the beasty to eat. You can hear this on this clip. Heather explains how the bat detector works in this clip too by reducing the frequency of the ultra-sonic echo-location calls to a frequency that we can hear in the human ear. Clever stuff!

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