A walk in the Norfolk countryside

On Friday 20th of May, we ran our second walk from St Helen Church in the lovely, peaceful countryside surrounding the parish of Gateley, near Fakenham . The weather this time compared to our walk in Ovington was warmer, with plenty of insects seen flying around. On collection of the static detectors that we had left out in the grounds of the churchyard, I noted that a significant percentage of the memory cards were used up indicating that we had a lot of bat activity the night before. This gave me hope that we would have a successful evening of bat watching and listening.

Six people turned up and once the usual introductions were over and detectors were handed out, we entered into the church just as the light was starting to dim outside to see what we would hear. The church is in a remote location, found tucked away behind a private residence. Inside the church we were able to see and hear both soprano and common pipistrelles, and as it got darker and level of activity increased, both species of pipistrelles used the interior of the church at the same time.





We then headed to a private garden and investigated some of the old barns. All was quiet in the barns but we did hear a few pipistrelles foraging outside the buildings. On leaving one of the barn we were fortunate enough to see a soprano pipistrelle flitting around the building punctuating its calls with a feeding buzz, a sound with a high pulse repetition rate indicating that the bat had caught his/her dinner.





A walk further down the road unfortunately did not pick up much activity apart from a few pipistrelles commuting through. Only when we returned back to the church did we hear more pipistrelles on the detectors.







We then went round the back of the church to check the moth trap that we left on for the duration of the walk.

Inside the trap we found plenty of small flies, including a few moths. These were:

                           3 x Orange Swifts

Orange Swift

The adults are unable to feed as they don't have a functional proboscis. The

males tend to brighter than the females, orange brown in colour with two

distinctive dark-edged white diagonal lines running along the forewings. Flies

around from late June until early September and can be found in habitats like

gardens, roadside verges, woodland rides and general rough grassy areas. The

larval food plants are the roots of various herbaceous plants such as

Broad-leaved Dock, Dandelion, Bracken and some grasses. 

And 2 x Green Carpets

Green Carpet
Bright green when just emerged but will turn yellowish - brown later on. This
moth can be found  in a range of habitats. These are heaths, woodland,  gardens,
chalk downland, moorland and fens. Its main food plant is bedstraw and can be found
flying around from May to July and August to September.