Having heard reports of bats flying in the last week from elsewhere in Derbyshire, I decided to put out my bat detector on Saturday night (05-01-13). Indeed I also recorded a couple of bat calls in the early evening. The calls were from common pipistrelle. Bats are normally in hibernation at this time of year, but they will rouse to feed and drink when conditions are suitable, the recent relatively high temperatures have obviously woken them up!
The diagram below shows one of the ecolocation call files recorded on the bat detector with a peak frequency of 47.9kHz, which falls within the normal range of common pipistrelle. Note the typical ‘hockey stick’ shape of the call.
No doubt some of you will have heard the tawny owls calling in recent nights around the village. I love this enigmatic sound with which many people will be familiar.
The tawny owl has inspired many a poet and writer; Wordsworth describes putting his hands together to mimic the call of the tawny owl in his poem ‘There was a Boy’. Although the call, commonly likened to Tu-whit Tu-who, was perhaps first described by Shakespeare in his early comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 5 (Scene 2) published in 1598. This description is really a combination of the male and the female calls. The male call is the classic tu-whoo and the female can be likened to the tu-whit, which is more of a screech.
Tawny owls can call at any time of year, but are most often heard in autumn when pair bonding takes place and at the start of the breeding season, which normally runs from February to mid-May. Perhaps the current spell of warmer weather has started them off a bit early this year!
When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
William Shakespeare.