Penarth residents went batty at a recent event at St Augustine's Church

Thirty-five participants assembled on the front steps of St Augustine's at 8.50pm recenlty, despite the weather being rather off-putting: a cold evening was made more uncomfortable by a relatively stiff wind, very much in contrast to the mostly balmy evenings of pervious days. Bats are clearly a topic of considerable interest!

The visitors were guided by bat expert was Huw Beckett from the Glamorgan Bat Club, who delivered an outstanding talk on all aspects of bat life and behaviour.

This was very well received by all of the assembled listeners, with ages ranging from early teens to quite old. Sadly, no doubt due to the weather, there were very few bats on display, all of which were either Common or occasionally Soprano Pipistrelles; a noctule may also have flown over. Nonetheless, these still provided a good opportunity to use the bat detectors, which were available and to actually see examples of the remarkable hunting patterns of these superb flyers.

Throughout, Huw continued to explain their typical behaviour and life style.

Hopefully, the next meeting planned for early autumn will benefit from much more bat-friendly weather.

However, this year our collection was very dismal, consisting of a very limited range, both in terms of species and numbers.

Admittedly, it was also a quite unsuitable night for such trapping, being rather cool and quite windy (see above!). That we only collected medium-sized brown moths could be due to many reasons, but is very concerning, as moths are not only a vital part of the general ecosystem but are also valuable as pollinators. Their numbers, and those of butterflies, have been in steep decline for years, in common with many other species.

Moths are also often blessed with superb names, dreamt up in many cases by Victorian Reverend gentlemen, in their leisure time. For example, our 'dismal' horde did at least include a Setaceous Hebrew Character (see photo), a Common Quaker and a Shuttle-shaped Dart. So next time you find caterpillars chewing on your prize cabbages, think seriously of leaving a few unmolested thereby allowed to develop into adults.