Under the Eye of the Bat

I am a bit concerned.

Boyfriend and I seem to be in practise for getting old. It first struck
us a couple of weekends ago when
we were sitting in the garden of Jacquie's Tearoom
(after going to the carboot sale) enjoying the fact
that you could tell it was a good place to have cups
of tea because they brought you a separate jug of hot
water to top up the pot.

When I review our best moments over the last few
months alarmingly I find they are eccentric and camp
in their essence.

"Aww," we say, dewy eyed, "do you remember the Queen's
Golden Jubilee Floral Display at Fairlight Church?"

"Oh yes, I particularly liked the rendering of the
Commonwealth Games in lilies and carnations."

How often we reminisce about going up the church tower
and how we were allowed to play All Things Bright And
Beautiful on the Church bells.

Another concerning factor is the fact that our
favourite thing in Blackpool was the Tower Ballroom.
The delight of leaning over the balcony and watching
the twirling couples doing the tango and the waltz.

So it's no surprise really when you think about it
that we decided to go on the Bat Walk last night at a
local stately home .

First of all we were late of course. We missed the
rendevous in the car park. In fact we almost missed
the car park altogether. Still, I was navigating and we
got there in the end. Alone in the grounds we scurried
like naughty children surmising that the batwalkers
wouldn't have got far and we could track them down. We
crept through the walled garden, whispering until we
finally found them.

I had said they would be wearing tweeds and wellies
but nothing could have prepared for the bonkers
assortment of eccentrics we found in the stable yard.
A knowledgeable young woman in jodphurs and one of
those padded gilets showed us a bat. A pipistrelle
shorter than a thumb it was like a little rectangle of
dense fur with a tiny, strange alien face. She let me
stroke the bat. It crawled up her hand and didn't seem
to mind when she gently extended its rubbery wing for
us to see.

Then the Bat Expert handed out the Bat Detectors to
some reliable members of the group. I didn't get one. He demonstrated
the Correct Use of Bat
Detectors and all the responsible ones twiddled with
the on switches and the volume controls. The Bat
Expert pointed his in the air and immediately picked
up the sound of a bat. Excitedly all the bat detector
holders pointed theirs in the same direction. It was
like a Spielberg film moment. Total silence in the
group and the reliable ones all with arms identically
outstretched. We listened.

"That's a pipistrelle," the expert said, expertly. "You
can tell a pip as they say it sounds like a wet hand
slapping a thigh." The group all tittered obediently.
It was Carry On Bat Watching and no mistake.

There was something about the Bat Expert's voice that reminded me of
someone.

The off we set, down the dark paths into the grounds.
There must have been forty of us, tramping along
behind The Expert and Jodphur Woman. In a clearing in
some trees he suddenly stopped. We all stopped too and
gathered round. Hoisted high, his detector was picking
up more clicks.

"The Whiskered Bat," he said, almost reverently. "Very
rare." We listened too and looked up into the dark
air. The idea of seeing a real bat flapping about
seeming like more than we could possibly deserve. The
clicks we could hear were different the expert said
and we nodded as though we could tell the difference.
The Whiskered is endangered but no more whiskered than
any other bat it turns out. "He whispers out his
call," the expert intoned and I felt hairs rising all
over me. This was poetry in the making.

Then on we went to the lakeside. The expert waved his
detector about and alleged there were Daubenton's in
the area. We craned our necks and hoped hard. The
expert went too close to the edge of the lake and
swung his searchlight about fruitlessly. The group
swung their searchlights about too. It looked like
London in the Blitz. The Daubentons seemed to be
eluding us spotters.

They fly low over the lake, we were told, grabbing up
insects in their little hairy feet. How we wanted to
see them. We stretched our necks and strained our eyes. Whilst we
stood, a hushed huddle, undeserving - the expert explained about the
recent discovery of the 52khz pip. Before that they thought all pips
were 45khz.

It turned out the Daubentons were round the corner and we trooped along
and at last there they were flickering across the
water. How we thrilled to the snatched sight of them. How we watched
them for ages skimming across the surface of the lake. The Expert never
seemed to tire of them even when the children in the party began to get
restless, shuffling their feet and making horror faces with their
flashlights under their chins. The expert was rapt telling us the miles
various bats would travel in a night, about their summer and their
winter roosts, their night and their day roosts, their breeding
habits.

Suddenly I realized who he sounded like. Baldrick, I whispered to the
boyfriend, and it was. A Bat Expert who sounded just like Baldrick. We
smaned at the back of the group. A few watchers looked at us.

It seemed to me that the expert didn't really need this audience. I
thought he would be just as happy on the lip of the lake on his own
catching the bat flights in his torch beam and talking. Eventually he
sighed and turned, led us back to the stables where there was a chance
for a drink and to buy a copy of his expert book "Bats".

Boyfriend and I silently agreed to slip away. The brightly lit stable
with its urn seemed wrong after all that darkness. We would have been
irritated by the watchers trying on their new bat lingo. So we sneaked
off past the end of the stable block and, in the pitch dark, tried to
find the carpark. We did eventually and drove home through night air we
now knew to be bat filled. It was a bit late and of course we were
looking forward to getting back for a nice cup of tea.