Mountain biking, orange tips and pipistrelles

Alison, Ellen and I spent our Monday holiday on a loop of the scenic Loch Venachar, taking advantage of a section of the newly opened Great Trossachs Path (which runs from Callander to Inversnaid) to make a circuit of the loch. It had seemed like it would be a suitable cycle ride for our 6 year old daughter - I had imagined a flattish track contouring pleasantly above the loch shore - but the hilly nature of the northern shore Great Trossachs Path section means its actually better for older kids. We will revisit it in a couple of years when Ellen is older as a loop ride is always more enjoyable than an out and back, the southern section is excellent, and passing through Brig O'Turk offers both the tea rooms and a gastro pub as possible break points. Still we made it and managed to spot 3 orange tip butterflies flitting by the stream running down to Milton of Callander. These were the first of the year for me, so extra special.

Later, back in Milngavie enjoying our new Ikea chairs in the conservatory I spotted our first bats of the year flying over the end of the garden. I took the bat detector with me and headed down into the woods that run along the bottom of the Clober golf course and Crawford Road to check on the bat box that Ellen and I built and installed 7 meters up a sycamore tree. Standing under our bat box, there was definite bat activity nearby but it was too dark to see much. As Jill Tomlinson's Plop would say: 'Dark is sooooper'. Whats better than hanging out in the woods listening to bats on a mild May night, Venus shining brightly in the western sky. The signals I was picking up were around 45kHz so it is likely they were pipistrelle bats. The human ear can only detect up to 20 kHz, so the heterodyne bat detector that we have cleverly subtracts the frequency you set the detector to - say 43 kHz - to produce an audible 2kHz sound.

#LochVenachar #bats #orangetips