Fly by Day

About two hundred yards down the road from here, towards the neighbouring hamlet of Berrio Bridge is a stretch of road which is shaded by overhanging trees. On a sunny day it is quite cool and with dappled patches of light here and there. I walk down their literally every day, usually about oneish in the afternoon (hey I'm a creature of habit) and for the last two days have been rewarded with the fantastic sight of a single pipistrelle bat flying up and down the road hunting for insects. Now we often see various types of bats around here, quite often in the evening around dusk, but this is the first time I've seen one hunting in broad, albeit dappled, daylight. The little guy performs all manner of aerial acrobatics, flying right past my head and even skimming just above the road surface. We've had a huge amount of rain and bad weather here lately so my hunch is this chap, being a bat and like most bats prefering not to hunt in bad conditions is making the best of the recent warm sun and piling in as much grub as possible. And good luck to him I say.