We were delighted to host a bat walk on the evening of Thursday 2nd October. The event was organised by the Trees and Green Spaces group of the SE5 Forum and Camberwell Society and was led by Lambeth’s borough ecologist, Dr Iain Bolton.
About 20 minutes before the walk it started raining lightly, which was a worry as bats are known to hate rain. However, it soon stopped and as Iain turned on the first bat detector, we were greeted with the sounds of a group of bats flying overhead, echo locating and hunting for insects. It’s funny how as soon as you hear the bats on the detectors, you then also see them. There were about 5 bats flitting above our heads in Dog Kennel Hill Open Space and they were pretty fearless, swooping low towards us in search of their supper.
There are 19 types of bat in the UK and 12 of these can be found in London. The ones we detected are the smallest bat – the pipistrelle. We took along our two Batbox Duet detectors and Iain had bought along a bag of Magenta Bat5 bat detectors. These bat detectors convert the ultrasound that bats emit from their mouths, into sounds that humans can hear with their ears! Iain advised us to set our detectors to 50 mHz as this is a good mid-range frequency for UK bats. The sound coming out of the bat detector was once described as “a tapdancing goldfish” and this description still seems to fit what we heard. Every now and then you can hear the bat “blowing a raspberry”, which is in fact when they have caught an insect. A bat can eat around 1000 insects a night and their presence in Dog Kennel Hill Wood and open Space is a good sign of lots of insects being present, so we must be doing something right for biodiversity! Head over to our Instagram page for a video of the bat detectors so you can hear what they sound like for yourself..
We continued the walk through the path in the woods where, as in previous years, we heard bats flying above our heads using the path in the woods as a flight path. We headed into Green Dale fields and here there were also pipistrelles flying above our heads, though fewer than in DKH Open Space. Iain explained that this is because where we were on green Dale is more open and therefore colder so there are fewer insects and therefore fewer foraging bats. We headed onto the old tennis courts on Green Dale which has more shrubbery and trees and here there were indeed more bats flying overhead.
About 40 people attended the bat walk, one young bat aficionado even came dressed as a bat! People came from all over Camberwell, many of them had never ventured into Dog Kennel Wood before so it was a pleasure to welcome them to the area. We hope the event means everyone will now pause their busy lives, look up and enjoy the sight of some of the smallest residents of Camberwell flying quietly above their heads.
Special thanks to Iain Boulton, Sophy Taylor, Petra Handoca and Marika Thorogood who made it happen.
And if anyone wants to join the Friends of Dog kennel Hill Wood, please get in touch.
