More social life

We had a very good evening last night, with talks from Bob Acrey of the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and Steve Roe of the Derbyshire Bat Conservation Group. Bob did a workmanlike talk about the Trust's background, current projects and future plans; Steve was inspirational about bats. His talk both fascinated me concerning these remarkable mammals and was also a master class in the use of PowerPoint and sundry props such as black paper cutouts of a noctule and a pipistrelle bat to give an good idea of their size. Mercia Marina already sees at least seven species of bat in the summer, including noctules and Daubenton's.

It had never occurred to me before that because a bat navigates by "shouting" ultrasonically and then hearing the reflected sound, if they eat their prey on the wing they are flying blind. Try shouting with a mouthful of biscuit and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, anyone out there in Derbyshire looking for a speaker for an evening meeting could do a lot worse than to book Steve. There is at least one Bat Group in every county in England.

Sally's with us again today for the last time this week, so we've followed the routine of the past couple of days; a dog's motto for life, after all, is "This is how we always do it". The weather is still pretty challenging, being windy with it, so that although the air temperature is rising, it still feels pretty parky. We're expecting a final fall of snow anytime now, then a period of much milder, but wetter weather. Stuart has indeed turned the water supply back on, so Sheila is busy catching up with the laundry.

One last thing, especially for boaters who use the South East waterways; CRT are having a consultation about proposals for improving the availability of visitor moorings in that patch, which extends to Foxton and Braunston and includes the whole of the South Oxford. The document can be downloaded here and is well worth a look, as it may well be the way things are going to go all over the country over the next few years.

There's a substantial and reasonably good tempered discussion about the issues raised on a CWDF thread at the moment.