No denying any longer that I am officially a grown up. Saturday nights are no longer wild nights out but wildlife nights out!
Saturday night we went out on a bat walk, it was fantastic and even better, no hangover the next day! 😉

The walk was held on the National trust Wimpole estate.
With the evenings drawing in we’ve spotted a bat or two near home which the children have found really exciting so this was a great opportunity to go and learn more.

We were given a bat detector to use, how cool are they!? My eldest has now announced she wants Santa to bring her a bat detector for Christmas. Santa if you are reading this……
Armed with our detector we were marching across the estate , hunting out bat haunts, seeing where the bats live and learning about the finer points of bat poo! Most kids of course are fascinated about anything poo related so this kept them engaged whilst it was still light.

At dusk we were given lots of bat facts and the children found it hilarious to be given roles of prey during a visual demonstration of how bats feed. I am now the proud mother of a moth, a mayfly and in a twist of true comic genius my girliest girl was a dung beetle. Awesome! I then got to see them being bat snacks. 🙂 They of course found the whole thing highly hilarious.

Batman was their new hero and they were eager to rush around the estate hot on his heels!

It was then getting quite dark so we stomped off across to more rural areas of the estate and soon the bat detectors were clicking and pipping into life as bats whizzed by above us. Great fun!

We were lead around the huge lake to many different feeding grounds and saw and heard a number of different types of bats. We were even lucky enough to see (blink and you miss it) and hear the rare Barbastelle bat.

We had a fantastic evening, and returned to the car park with 3 happy and worn out children. A great, wild Satuday night. ..if only they served vodka 😉

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