Sunday 2 October 2011

Batty over a natty

It’s not every day we record a new mammal species for site but today was on of those days with Tony Lane and the East Yorkshire Bat Group discovering the first roosting natterer’s bat today:

Young female natterer’s:

We later found an adult male elsewhere and also present were nathusius’s pipistrelle for the fouth year running, soprano pipistrelle and this ferocious noctule:

Seemingly the Hempholme operations have had no effect on the bats and instead attracted a new one! This specimen sized common frog was again a welcome find too:

The best bird sightings have come in the form of two hobbies which have been putting on a great show all weekend catching migrant hawkers all over site and particularly well for the reserve walk yesterday. Unfortunately though no pictures so we’ll have to settle for Mike Day’s further great takes on the old faithful!:

Again a repeated presence of two or possibly more at the moment – triggering the usual scrapping:


Other than this five ruff were on South Marsh East today, with a black-tailed godwit about at first light. A couple of roe deer were present in the fields this evening with fox this morning. A rabbit made a lucky escape from the weasel today on the bat survey.

The other notable ‘sighting’ was various folk asking about a great white egret apparently logged at Tophill yesterday on internet sites – we do not know anything about it and certainly havn’t seen one - so if anyone can shed any light on this report it would appreciated!