I always get a certain buzz of expectancy before setting out to look for bats at night. It’s probably to do with the sneakiness of it all; using little black boxes of technology to decode nature as dusk melts into night.

The evening based at Exeter Catacombs & Cemetery had been organised by a few different groups including Exeter City Bat Group and Devon Wildlife Trust. The sun retreated, leaving a cool breeze and ombre sky under which we listened to the night’s information talk. We learned a brief history of the site and what species we were hoping to see.

Though the bats took their time to emerge, we weren’t short of distractions. Swifts screeched overhead, a tawny hooted quietly in the trees below, and the peregrine falcons nesting on St Michael and All Angels’ Church treated us to some aerial displays. It was the closest I’ve ever been to a wild peregrine, and it set the night up perfectly.

We were walking along the top cemetery wall when the quiet, surreptitious pops first emanated from the detectors. These soon transformed into a series of exuberant outbursts. From our position high above the cemetery it was easy to see which pipestrelles were producing the sounds, as they flitted towards and away from our group.

After a good 10 or 15 minutes of continuous pipestrelle activity, interest shifted to trying to locate a Lesser Horseshoe bat. After not too long, Greg from the bat group thought he could hear one. Everyone gathered around and sure enough the furtive, scratchier sounds of a horseshoe could be heard intermittently from our position outside the gates of a catacomb. After a short while we headed away, down into the main cemetery, ensuring we didn’t disturb its foraging activity for the night.

From there we walked the short distance to Exeter’s overflow channel. Firstly over the bridge by Mill on the Exe — the cascade crystalline in the moonlight’s full strength, and the bridge’s guiding lights illuminating intricate webs, a fat spider crouching in the middle of each. Then past the still, ghostly swan nesting on the path, now half concealed by the council’s temporary orange fencing. Very quickly, the forms of possibly 12 or 15 Daubenton’s bats revealed themselves. Their comparably flowing flight made the pips’ flapping seem almost erratic — these larger bats swooped low around our heads making us duck instinctively. They gave us some truly magical demonstrations of their characteristic foraging behaviour: periodic dips down to the water’s surface to scoop up unwitting insects. It felt like a privilege to witness.

It had been a surprisingly cold night and the Mill on the Exe called us back across the river to its cosy bar for the “Pints” part of the evening, though in an attempt to regain the feeling in my fingers I had hot chocolate. I talked to the remnants of the evening’s group about the night, detectors, and further opportunities with Exeter Bat Group. Having had an exam that day I decided it would probably be best to leave before I fell asleep on the table, so I reluctantly left the warmth and started the journey back.

The chill woke me back up and during the half hour walk up the steep hill towards my halls I rang my parents. As always I’m so thankful for their support — despite it getting to 11.30pm, and them being in bed, they were willing to listen to me describe in enthusiastic detail everything I’d seen and heard during the night! I can’t wait to get out and do some more bat detecting, and I’m hoping to head back down to the river sometime this week.