I went on a bat safari

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On Thursday night, I went on a bat safari along the River Cam in Cambridge.

It seems that the standard response to this statement is ‘Ew, why?’ If you are one of the people who’s said this to me, then please forgive me, but you are wrong. Bats are absolutely excellent. Yes, I was a teenage goth. And yes, I have had a bit of a rough year and maybe my idea of fun has become quite niche. But also, these are objectively fascinating creatures, the only flying mammal. We all know that they echolocate, but did you know have specially adapted inner-ear muscles that block their hearing so they don’t deafen themselves? They also exhibit delayed fertilization, where the females can store sperm (feeding it to keep it alive) in their uterus, only releasing it to conceive their young when the conditions are favourable. They may be a little weird-looking (and come to think of it, so am I), but bats deserve our love.

We booked onto a Bat Safari Punting trip run by the local Wildlife Trust. Boarding a punt at sunset, we were chauffeured along the the river towards Grantchester as the sky turned pink around us. Once the light was gone, the first bats began to appear - we heard them first on our handheld bat detectors, a series of high, fast clicks.

Early on, we saw tiny pipistrelles flitting around the tree canopy. Later, as it became darker, we watched Daubenton’s bats hunting low over the surface of the water, catching flies. At one point, we spotted two of these flying together, and our guide, Ian, explained that this was a mother teaching her pup to find the most abundant feeding grounds. As we neared the city again, we heard the lower, sonorous clicks of noctule bats, although never quite spotted them. But with a gibbous moon rising over the fens, the lush green surroundings and the watery ticking of the bat detectors, it was a magical, lulling experience.

I don’t have any good photographs of the bats - it was too dark and they were too fast. But I thought I’d share a few of my pictures from the evening, and urge you all to go if you’re ever in the vicinity. So far, the tours have raised £80,000 for local wildlife, and I can’t think of a better way to spend a summer’s evening. Just bring a cushion: punting is definitely for the young and springy, and my back has yet to recover.