Or do we have bats ??

Although we live more or less in the centre of the village Sails Ashore is quite secluded, And from the evidence we see get all sorts of nocturnal visitors, and some during the day as well.. Surveillance cameras are pretty clever these days, and not at all expensive, so we’ve set up a couple, one at Sails Ashore, and the other at Kowhai Lane. They record only over the hours of darkness, although we can check them anytime ….. the magic of the internet !!

Morning check time is while we are having our pre get up cup of coffee and gingernut.

And this morning several clips of something weird, and our best guess is its a bat, attracted to insects which are in turn attracted by the cameras infra red light.  The infra red light Freeze frame images look a bit weird, but maybe the way video cameras work has some bearing on what we see…… think the way aircraft propellers look on video.

The time stamps show it appearing at different times during the night. Insects are white blobs, and longer streaks are rain drops.

Not what we were expecting to see. But perhaps not entirely surprising. Some years ago I’d spent several evenings wandering around the roads with a clever little audio bat detector. Long tailed bats sonar is way above human hearing range. This bit of kit re played what it heard at a frequency even my old ears could hear. And I found bats in several place. But most at Lonnikers. When I was ranger here I was told bats and morepork used to haunt the few street lights for the moths that congregated around them.

So who knows, certainly something to explore.