This post refers to the July heatwave.
The Reserve was eerily quiet on the hottest day of July. The songbirds were silenced by the heat. Hiding away in the shadiest spots they could find. Conserving their resources. We feared for eggs or hatchlings from second or third clutches. At least here there is always water close by. Yet the quiet was odd, disturbing.
Compared to fields and parks, here, greenness remained. The root systems of plants so long established seemed able to draw what water there was from the parched earth. The grass, with relatively low footfall and little grazing (just muntjacs and geese) seemed resilient. The trees, most of them over fifty years old, coped with the conditions.
For the waterbirds, of course, there was a means of cooling their bodies. But what of the other creatures on site?
On the Wednesday night after the heatwave, we carried out a bat survey. It was the third in a series of four monthly surveys. Each one following the same route and recording for three minutes at the same ten specific locations. On every occasion, the session began fifteen minutes after sunset.
As we had already surveyed the area twice, we knew what to expect. But this time, we heard Soprano Pipistrelles earlier than on the previous two occasions. Most noticeably, there seemed to be far, far more of them.
There are two equally likely reasons for this. Firstly, between this survey and the last the young bats would have matured enough to fly with their parents. The second reason, given the weather, is perhaps more significant. It is plausible that over the last few hot nights the bats had limited their foraging activities and so, as the temperature dropped, they were making up for lost eating time.
Anecdotal evidence from other species could support this claim. For a start, consider how quiet the birds were on the hottest days. They, like the bats, must have been especially in need of food as soon as the days were back to normal for July. On the night of the bat session, we saw a badger out well before sunset and, for the first time in more than a decade, I saw one alive on the side of the road as I drove home.
This bears considering: if there has been a spell of unseasonably hot (or cold) weather, once conditions return to the norm, you might want to put out extra bird food, drive with more than usual alertness and have even more consideration for the wild creatures that you see.
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