I've been going around our meadow by the brook now and again with the bat detector on auto-id, always finding lots of pipistrelles and smaller numbers of several other species, even a couple of Bechstein's if the auto-id is to be believed. Then in late July the detector was flooded with a continuous wooshing sound that confused its auto-id software. We hadn't much idea what might be making this racket as it's just about everywhere in our 3 acre plot. Then an article in a wildlife magazine about bush crickets gave us a hint - they tend to start singing, day and night, in late July. So we went down to the meadow in daylight using the bat detector to show us a place where the chuffing sound was loudest, and almost immediately my wife spotted this in a rough patch:-
Best-laid plans: swallows, hornets, bats and bush crickets
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Paul O
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Best-laid plans: swallows, hornets, bats and bush crickets
Well, the swallows didn't use our shed where we made a special entry-hole for them even though the sparrowhawk stopped visiting it. A few days ago I was fiddling around in the shed, not noticing what might have been flying nearby and working above my head. Then yesterday we noticed hornets flying in and out of the very fine hole we hadn't made for them.
And this is what was going on just inside the shed above my head:-
I had been concerned about the small number of wasps/hornets around our land this year, but it seems that the bad weather may have delayed them a bit.
I've been going around our meadow by the brook now and again with the bat detector on auto-id, always finding lots of pipistrelles and smaller numbers of several other species, even a couple of Bechstein's if the auto-id is to be believed. Then in late July the detector was flooded with a continuous wooshing sound that confused its auto-id software. We hadn't much idea what might be making this racket as it's just about everywhere in our 3 acre plot. Then an article in a wildlife magazine about bush crickets gave us a hint - they tend to start singing, day and night, in late July. So we went down to the meadow in daylight using the bat detector to show us a place where the chuffing sound was loudest, and almost immediately my wife spotted this in a rough patch:- I think it's a long-winged conehead, and there must be a lot of them - I wonder if their noise interferes with the bats' hunting as well as with our bat-detecting?
I've been going around our meadow by the brook now and again with the bat detector on auto-id, always finding lots of pipistrelles and smaller numbers of several other species, even a couple of Bechstein's if the auto-id is to be believed. Then in late July the detector was flooded with a continuous wooshing sound that confused its auto-id software. We hadn't much idea what might be making this racket as it's just about everywhere in our 3 acre plot. Then an article in a wildlife magazine about bush crickets gave us a hint - they tend to start singing, day and night, in late July. So we went down to the meadow in daylight using the bat detector to show us a place where the chuffing sound was loudest, and almost immediately my wife spotted this in a rough patch:- I think it's a long-winged conehead, and there must be a lot of them - I wonder if their noise interferes with the bats' hunting as well as with our bat-detecting?