Creatures of the Night

by greggyboy1

So come 7pm on a Saturday I’m ready to head out. Pubbing? No. Clubbing? God no. Eats? Na aah. I’m off to Middleton Lakes RSPB reserve for a Creatures of the Night event. With the promise of bat identification and moth trapping fun from 19.30 to 23.00. I’m gonna throw in a spoiler right now, it was, in the main part, wank.

It was a sell out evening, £6 a head for members £8 if not, with 30 of us mugs in attendance. We were split into two groups and it was at this point that 15 people, 1 of them me, had a one and a half hour bat identification walk, minus the identification, and generally minus the bloody bats as well. Our big fat hairy oaf of a guide was Pete, who I believe can not only not tell bat species apart, but probably can’t tell bats apart from other orders of mammals. I bet if a bat landed on his face, looked him square in the eye and said “Pete, I’m a bat, a brown long-eared bat to be precise you god damn son of a bitch” and then punched him on the nose he’d still be none the wiser.

We had bat detectors (we can’t hear the noises bats make when echo locating) that are handy bits of kit but only if you know how to use them, and they come in two sorts from what I gathered. The most common ones (the ones we were given to use) have to be set at a specific frequency and will then pick up the bats that only emit sounds at that range and amplify the sound for us to hear, thus being able to tell species apart. Though as it turns out there is some overlap between species which is where having a knowledgeable guide is handy, sorry, would have been handy. Fuckwit Pete couldn’t tell his arse from his elbow, let alone a common pipistrelle from a soprano pipistrelle. Where was I? Oh yes, detectors. Well good old Pete had the all singing all dancing type of detector that doesn’t have to be set at one frequency, this bad boy will pick up all the species from the get go. Two problems. Firstly you still have to know what the different species sound like, so as I’ve said before, we were fucked on that one. And secondly, his detector wasn’t working! Nice one Pete. I asked Pete why there isn’t a detector that not only picks up the bat sounds but then, with a reasonable degree of certainty that I’m sure could be achieved, tell you what species it is? He reckoned there wasn’t a big enough market for it to justify development costs but I knew of 15 folks right there and then that would have snatched one up! As it turns out the other group had a more successful time of it, funny that.

At this point I’m thinking of fucking off. It’s 9pm and I can’t see things getting any better, but they did, eventually. I’d been robbed of 6 quid so I thought “fuck it, let’s see this out”. So I wandered back to where the moth traps were set up near the car park, leaving Pete to shove his detector up his arse. At this point we had hot chocolate and marshmallows laid on for us. Do not ever buy Sainsburys basics hot chocolate. Blurgh blurgh blurgh. Marshmallows were nice though, not had em in years. After pitching the drink off out into the darkness and hoping to hear Pete screaming “oh god my face, it burns” but alas not, I wandered over to where Bob, one of the moth experts was stood on his own. It was a clear night and he was looking up at the stars, turns out he knows a thing or two about the sky at night does Bob. He was pointing out this and that which I found really great. I can do the plough and the North star, then I’m fucked. It ended up with everyone gathered round totally engrossed. Then one prick got his iphone out or whatever to show off some constellation id app bollocks, only one fella showed any interest, Bob had the rest of us in the palms of his hands. Then he showed us a bit of kit you can buy for only a few quid called a planisphere that will show you a map of the sky on any given day of the year, totes getting me one of them.

Then we split up to go and look at the moth traps. Well I stuck to Bob like glue, not having another debacle of the like Pete provided, a family with a couple of young kids came with us, and one other woman. Well that bit was good too. Bob and his chums go out once a month doing these moth surveys and he sure knew his shit. Basically it’s a proper powerful light bulb on top of a box with a Perspex slanted roof that all manner of bugs, flies, moths etc get trapped in. The kids really enjoyed seeing the stuff up close and their enthusiasm rubbed off on us all I think. Plus we had a good chat about habitats and ecology so found it jolly interesting.

So after a well rocky start it sort of came good in the end thanks to moth man Bob. And with no thanks to shit Pete, bat man he ain’t.