The Museum of Scottish Country Life, at Wester Kittochside in East Kilbride, has started its annual autumn bat walks on Tuesday evenings.
As dusk descends, children and their parents can take a two-hour guided walk around the museum’s farmsteading. John Hawell, a countryside ranger and member of the Clyde Bat Group, is the museum’s very own batman. His special bat detecting equipment enables him to identify some of the 17 species of bat native to the UK as they echo locate, while children can find out what types of insects the bats eat using a moth trap.
“Bats send out really high frequency signals,” explains Marion Lawton, of the museum. “The bat detector picks up these signals and amplifies them so we can hear them. You can tell from the sound the bat detector makes what type of bat it is.”
The walks, on September 13 and 20, are free but numbers are limited. Tel 0131 247 4377www.nms.ac.ukcountryhome
