We get them here in the summer evenings when the honeysuckle is blooming ... we lie on the grass and watch the bats chase them as they fly around the big ash tree.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I had never seen the adult form until we moved to Suffolk. Quite a shock as the first encounters were indoors when they came down the chimney. They are huge and very buzzy and seem to go by a variety of local names including 'July Bug' which is when they are most likely to be seen. Fairly alarming until you know they're not going to hurt you.
Went to an outdoor concert a couple of summers ago and a couple of large clouds of these insects made their presence felt. They were attracted to the stage lights and buzzed in and around the performing band and also in and around the audience. Many people (including the band) thought they were swarms of bees or other stinging insects - cue lots of screams and flailing arms. Concert was stopped for half an hour for everybody to calm down and to allow the cockchafers to disperse.
Heaven is ... sitting in the garden with a G&T and a cat while watching the sun go down
We get them here in the summer evenings when the honeysuckle is blooming ... we lie on the grass and watch the bats chase them as they fly around the big ash tree.
We get them here in the summer evenings when the honeysuckle is blooming ... we lie on the grass and watch the bats chase them as they fly around the big ash tree.
We get them here in the summer evenings when the honeysuckle is blooming ... we lie on the grass and watch the bats chase them as they fly around the big ash tree.
Bit too big for a bat to eat!
Makes me worry how big the bats are!!
Have you seen how big noctules are? They can get up to 40cm wingspan! That's about twice as big as the usual pipistrelles people see.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
40cm? Holy crow. That's the same as a blackbird. I wouldn't like to be dive bombed by a cloud of those.
I've been working on a renovation project that has greater horseshoe bats living in there. They're not far off the size of noctules. I'll be measuring up in small rooms (working under a protected species licence of course) and these bats keep dropping out of holes in the ceiling and walls and doing a few laps of my head before flying off. Once you get over the shock it's an amazing experience.
They must devastate the local butterfly population though looking at the amount of wings they leave lying about the place.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Went to an outdoor concert a couple of summers ago and a couple of large clouds of these insects made their presence felt. They were attracted to the stage lights and buzzed in and around the performing band and also in and around the audience. Many people (including the band) thought they were swarms of bees or other stinging insects - cue lots of screams and flailing arms. Concert was stopped for half an hour for everybody to calm down and to allow the cockchafers to disperse.
They must devastate the local butterfly population though looking at the amount of wings they leave lying about the place.