Nature Night

On Friday 18 September 2009 we held an event where we came back to St Mark's in the evening with our families to see the wildlife and wildflowers we have in our school grounds.

We had all the collecting pots, thrashing nets, magnifying lens, identification books and spotters charts at the ready.  We had great fun exploring the science garden, hedgerows, nature reserve and wildlife garden.  Click on the images below to download our Moth Watch chart or to view larger images of some of the moth species we trapped on the night.

Bats

As we finished the pasties it was getting dark and we turned on the bat detectors and listened for the telltale squeaks of passing bats being picked up by the devices.  A small number of bats were flying over the playground and we were able to identify them as Common Pipistrelle and Soprano Pipistrelle bats.  The bats use echolocation (a special sonar system) to find insects in the dark and even these little bats, with a wingspan of about 25cm, eat up to 3,000 insects each in a night!

Did you know...

• bats can live up to 30 years.
• Britain's most common bat, the Common Pipistrelle, weighs less than a 2p piece!

Click on the following links for more information on British bats:

• Bat Conservation Trust
• Young People's Trust for the Environment

Moths

Then we went down to the nature reserve where we had two moth-traps running as part of National Moth Night.  Even though it wasn't fully dark we had some moths turning up as soon as we put the light on.  We also detected more bats.  They were probably after the moths!

For more information on the moths trapped, go to the results on our WASP blog.

National Moth Night is an event which takes place in many locations every year to record the moth species on a given date.  The organisers say "participants throughout the British Isles are encouraged to see what moths they can find in their chosen location and the results are pooled into Britain’s largest survey of what species are on the wing".  This year they were particularly interested to record migrant species. 

For more information go to the National Moth Night website.