Brighton may be a bustling city, but the council’s Countryside Service regularly hold events encouraging us all to get back to nature, and Friday was no exception. Sounding more like a horror film than a countryside event, ‘The Stanmer Night Life Thriller’ was in fact a late-night walk around Stanmer Park looking for bats, moths and things that go bump in the night (although that was just me falling over). And needless to say it was free. When I asked if they accept donations, I was told “No, just pay your council tax”.
With the weather we’ve been having lately, the only wildlife we seemed likely to spot was a few ducks and possibly some fish swimming around our feet, but ever the optimist, I turned up at 9:30pm and met Countryside Ranger Dave Larkin and Rights of Way Officer Tim Squire. I like to think of them as the Batman and Robin of Stanmer Park.
Dave and Tim took us straight to a clearing in the trees where they’d set up a moth trap. We were told it was an expensive ‘Robinson’ trap, but it looked more Heath Robinson to me, filled as it was with that most hi-tech of moth-catching devices: egg boxes. The moths are apparently attracted by the light, fly in, then change their minds and try to get a bit of shade by hiding under an egg box, thereby allowing Dave to grab them for identification purposes.
It was a little early for moths, so we turned our attention to bats instead. I must admit I was dubious when Dave and Tim produced two electronic boxes, handed one to me, and said “Do you want to try the bat detector?”. I could sense a candid camera moment, and felt it was only a matter of time before they had me standing in the woods with a colander on my head and a TV aerial in my hand, trying to pick up signals from space. But sure enough, the bat phone worked. By taking the bats’ calls and converting them to a lower frequency, it allows you to hear the clickety-click conversations of any nearby bats.
Having spotted three different species (Pipistrelle, Noctule and Serotine) Tim led us down the hill to the pond in front of Stanmer House, which is home to the smaller Daubenton’s bat. They apparently sound “more like a machine gun”, which is presumably why they call the event a ‘Thriller’ – you feel like you’re being shot at in the dark.
Not everyone was put off by the sound of gunfire though. As we stood watching the bats swooping over the pond at dusk, a badger emerged from the car park opposite, posed for us under a streetlight, then ambled off into the bushes.
Having badgered the bats for long enough, we headed back to the moth trap, where Dave Larkin had managed to lay his hands on a variety of specimens. It was difficult to get close to the trap without inhaling five different species, but I held my breath and examined them all, from Emerald and Peppered moths, to the aptly named Heart & Dart, on which Mother Nature appears to have drawn love-hearts and daggers.
We paused briefly while Dave dived into the bushes and attempted to pimp a couple of glow-worms into some hot beetle action by putting them together in a box and encouraging them to mate (needless to say it failed; I think the female had a headache), before heading off into the darkness of the neighbouring trees.
At the start of the evening Dave had hung ‘wine ropes’ nearby - strips of flannel soaked in a mixture of red wine, molasses, treacle and sugar. It’s a recipe moths are apparently fond of, although Dave informed me that if you’re out of red wine, you can also use beer. The moths aren’t fussy when it comes to alcohol.
Hoping to discover some new species (and possibly get them drunk), we ended the night with a tour of Stanmer Park’s wine region. Unfortunately, having tramped through the trees and examined all eight of our alcohol-sodden rags, we found no signs of life whatsoever. Trust me to pick the one night when the moths had gone tee-total.
