Hello and welcome to the National Trust Podcast. I’m Kate Martin, Lead Ranger in the Northwest. Today we’re replaying one of our favourite episodes as we head out after dark, to see how the world comes alive at night at Cragside in Northumberland. We’ll be getting up close to some freaky and familiar creatures, to bust some myths about the animals on the night shift. I'm sitting here reclining in a deck chair on a balmy summer evening, overlooking the formal gardens at Cragside to the
Moorlands and the hills beyond. About 1000 acres and with locations as varied as the carriage driveway, with panoramic views, fern covered gorges, coniferous forest, seeing all Cragside has to offer could take you days. So to see as much as I can, I've actually decided to stay within the grounds at one of their on site holiday homes. So tonight, I'm taking full advantage of my VIP access to a lock in here at Cragside and heading out to discover what it has to offer after dark.
I'm leaving the neat manicured lawns, glass houses and the wide open skies of the formal gardens where the holiday cottages are and I'm heading towards the woods to meet a Ranger who's going to accompany me on my night time adventure. So as I make my way through the trees, I can hear that sunset frenzy of birds settling down for the evening and crepuscular wildlife animals that are most active at dusk and dawn will be
emerging now in the twilight. I'm heading up to the Clock Tower now, which is at the edge of the woods. Standing next to it is ranger Helen Burn. Hi, Helen. You alright?
Heya Kate. Yeah, nice to meet you.
So, Helen, I'm really excited about exploring Cragside tonight.
Actually, I've got a confession to make. I've never been around Cragside in the dark myself so we can explore it together for the first time. I've got a few activities lined up for you to help you get really up close and personal with some of the characters that we might see and it's all about putting your senses to the test. Gonna meet some wildlife experts in the pinetum.
Fab. Let's go. It's finally starting to get a little bit darker now and actually walking round at this time of night can actually feel a bit unsettling even in a place that you really know, like the back of your hand. Sometimes feels that there's those little eyes watching you.
There's definitely going to be things watching us. I think things like deer and rabbit. I know that on the estate we have got badgers and foxes.
It makes you realize actually just how poor our eyesight is. What are the other animals with sort of stand out senses that can help them navigate at night here, Helen?
One that stands out for me would be owls.
In the UK, the nocturnal creatures that have the most stunningly big eyes are probably some of the owls. My name is Marc Holderied. I'm a professor here at the University Of Bristol's Biology Department. A lot of the stuff owls do, they do by vision. At daylight, they have a tiny pupil because they don't want a lot of light to come in. But at night, this pupil widens exposing all this massive lens and that just brings up their sensitivity. But not all of what
they do is by vision. Owls are, when they hunt relying a lot on their sense of hearing. The Barn Owl has this beautiful white face. The whole, mirror like, round face is nothing more than a sound collecting device. In its face to the left and to the right of its beak are the two ears. The two ears are not the same shape. One of these ears points slightly downwards, the other points slightly upwards. It means that it's not just the left right information but also
the looking up and looking down information. For example, that's how they can hunt voles or shrews under a layer of snow. So there's no visual information whatsoever, but they hear them squealing down there and they strike through the loose snow.
I've got a bag of contraptions with me tonight that's going to help us as we're going around. I have got something we can use to give you an idea what it might be like to hear a little bit better. A little bit like an owl. So I've got a parabolic microphone.
That essentially is a satellite dish that you can hold by the look of it.
Yeah, kind of. So it's sort of a similar shape to an owl's face and it directs the sound in towards the microphone and helps pick up the noises.
So I'm just moving the microphone now to see if I can pinpoint anything in particular. Well, that's really noticeable, but you can actually hear the babbling brook. Let's move it away again and then back. How different that sounds. So you could absolutely see how an owl is able to sort of pinpoint that noise.
Just walking over the wooden bridge into the pinetum. Pretty imposing these trees even earlier on in the day but in this time of night, because they're so big and they're blocking out so much of the light, it feels quite claustrophobic in here really. I can see some people ahead of us. Hiya, so I hear you're my expert in night time adventures?
Hi, I'm Heather Devey. I'm co-director of wild intrigue. We like to introduce people to nature in northern England.
Why are you lurking in the pinetum at this time of the night?
It's a good question. So I'm gonna get you up close and personal with bats.
I love bats. Where are they?
Bats are usually all around us actually. And it's just that we can't hear them.
My name is Thomas Neil. I'm a research scientist at the University Of Bristol. Bats are nocturnal hunters. So they've evolved a system called echolocation. And what we mean by that is that bats use sound to navigate at night. So what bats do is they produce ultrasonic clicks out of their mouth or sometimes their nose and they essentially bounce back off objects around the bat and the bat listens for the echoes from these clicks. Other animals that use echolocation are the
dolphins and whales. So these use it in a similar way to bats, but they're using it to navigate in the sea. The clicks are ultrasonic, which means they are outside of our hearing range. A young child may be out at night and be able to pick up some of the lower frequencies that bats are using. Unfortunately, as you get older, you tend to lose the higher frequency hearing in your hearing range. So a grown adult would not be able to hear them as well.
So this is a heterodyne detector. And it basically means that we can eavesdrop on bat echolocation and it just transforms it basically so that we can understand bat chat.
I love the idea of bat chat. That sounds great.
So we turn it on at the side. Are you ready for the static? Oh we had a whisper of a pipistrelle there. So that is a soprano pipistrelle and just there he is, just right there.
You get the odd little glimpse and as soon as you turn your head it's gone. Oh, there it is again, it's just kind of circling round above us, just around the edges of the trees.
They're very busy up there. Every click that you hear is a sound that, that pipistrelle is making out of its mouth. That's how fast it is. And then on top of that, it needs to eat the midges, it needs to eat the, the micro moths and it needs to chat and tell other bats what's going on. So we've heard the pipistrelle clicking there. They got a nice rapid beat, but there are a lot of different sounds that bats can make. So I've got a few on my phone here. This is a Brown Long Eared Bat.
It essentially whispers at 15 to 20 kilohertz and it's got a lovely rustle to it. That was a Greater Horseshoe. It's quite different, isn't it? It's got much more of a whistle to it. They effectively scream through their noses instead of their mouths.
So that's why we've got the horseshoe shaped nose?
Exactly. That last one was a Leisler's Bat, it's got that kind of sloppy drip. They're so different, so diverse, not just how they look but how they sound as well. And that's what makes them just so intriguing.
I love bats. You obviously love bats as well. But I know an awful lot of people find them a bit so freaky and weird. So why do think that is?
You know, they come out at night and you don't really see them? So you don't know quite what they are. There's a lot of mystery around them and a lot of myth and folklore, I suppose. Bats are nothing to be afraid of. That is, of course, unless you're a moth, which is just the perfect take out snack for a bat. Should we go check out some moths?
Oh, yeah, definitely. What is it we're looking out for?
We're looking for a bit of a eerie glow and we're going to introduce you to the other half of wild intrigue, Cain Scrimgeour.
It's absolutely pitch black. It's the real night time specialists out and about. Just walking down the road and then just out of the corner of my eye just spotted something crawling across the road and it was a toad.
There's another one.
Oh, yeah! There's another one! Oh there we go. The proper toad crawl. They'll be coming out for the slugs and the worms. They'll make sure they get somewhere nice and dark and damp before the sun comes up. I can see the light. Hello, Cain. You alright?
Hello there. You all right?
Helen, my fellow Ranger, you aren't looking particularly pleased.
I have to say, I'm not really the biggest fan of moths.
What now?
Yeah, it's just something about the way that they flap and then they're in your bedroom at night dive bombing you!
What kind of moths do you have? So Cain, come on, describe this intriguing contraption in front of us.
So this is a moth trap. The moths are attracted to this bulb in here because we've got to have a peek inside to see if anything's actually went inside the trap. So we'll just open this up here and it's absolutely full of Midges in there. Oh, there's a good one. So this one's called the Map Winged Swift.
Oh what a name!
You can see all of the intricate patterns there.
There is bronze and silver, almost like a sort of coppery colour. That is an absolutely beautiful moth.
Through the year the species change as well. So in the winter and spring you get sort of brown, quite drab looking moths. But as the flowers and the flora develops, you get a lot more colour. So you get pinks and oranges and golds and metallics. With class names like Peach Blossom and Burnish Brass, Elephant Hawk Moth, Garden Tiger Moth. There's other ones that haven't got great names because they're called'Uncertain' because they're really difficult to ID
as well. If you look really closely, you can see it's antenna, this one's a female. So it's just got simple structures. If it was a male, they would be really, really sort of fluffy looking like-.
Like Feathers!
I don't know whether you know where the nose of a moth might be placed, but it's within these feathery antennae that they have on their foreheads. And males have much bigger and more feathery antennae because they need a better sense of smell. The way the female attracts the males is by chemical signals, they send out pheromones that spread easily and are carried with the wind. And the male would sit somewhere and it's sniffing for these
chemical compounds. For these pheromones. Air would stream through these feathery antennae and they are studded with receptors. And as soon as a single molecule of this female pheromones interacts with these receptors, the moth takes off. So these moth would fly downstream from the wind. Eventually they'll find the female moth by its pheromones.
People love butterflies in general, but moths, people don't like moths. And it's largely down to just a few handfuls of species so you'll get three species that'll eat your clothes and your carpets and two of them are quite rare. But there's 2500 species of moths in the UK and only 59 species of butterflies. Really the moth do a lot of the work at night so they're the hard grafters. So they're incredibly important for pollination. But also because there's so many species that
they're really important as a food source. A caterpillar food source for our small birds.
But what can people do to help moths?
Plant- plants that will be good for pollinators but also leave some bits wild for the caterpillars.
Have we converted you?
I do feel like I'm swaying towards being a moth fan.
I think it's probably time we release them back into their natural environment.
I've got another game for you Kate. Moth's most powerful sense is their sense of smell. As I'm sure you'll have guessed you're going to smell your way to the next location. I've got two things for you.
A blindfold with some really creepy eyes on it and a can of deodorant.
Got that blindfold on now, I'm gonna spray some of the Lynx Africa and you have to use your sense of smell to follow the trail.
Ok. Oh, yeah.! Oh, wow! That is quite strong! I'm going sort of straight ahead at the moment. Gosh, that is so strong! That smells like- right? Oh, my word going left. I have to say Helen, this is the weirdest sat nav in the world!
Kate, you have reached your destination.
So I finally going to get to take my blindfold off and have a look where I am and I am by a lake. There's Heather from wild intrigue. Hiya Heather.
Hello again.
Why am I standing by a lake in the dark?
You mean you can't hear that?
Hear what?
You can't hear that midnight Rave?
A midnight rave?
I'll forgive you because actually it's beneath the surface of the lake.
Oh really?
Yeah, it's a pond rave.
So, what's this strange contraption heather?
So, this is a hydrophone. So, it basically means that we can gate crash and eavesdrop below the surface.
Amazing!
All of these freshwater invertebrates. They'll make the noises throughout the day, but they really come to life at night. So we'll plonk it in. We'll use our headphones and see what we can hear. So, what we're listening out for is clicks and rustles and pops and slaps and it's mainly the beetles that make these noises. And you've got your damsel fly nymphs, your dragonfly nymphs, they're all hunting different creatures, winning their
territories together. So there's drama unfolding just below the surface. Can you hear that kind of rhythmic beat? Well, that's one of my favourite sounds. This is a water boatman and it's really amazing because he's got the loudest mating call if you like, compared to his size than any other animal. And he's not singing. Can you guess what he might be doing?
Is he like rubbing his legs together?
He's rubbing appendages together, but it's not his legs. It's his genitals.
Wow! Ok!
Yeah. Welcome to the pond rave!
Well, Helen, all good parties must come to an end and it is the early hours of the morning now and the bed of the holiday cottage is starting to feel very appealing. Do you think after the experiences tonight you'll look at your place of work, this lovely Cragside with a different set of eyes?
Yeah, I think I will actually, it's been really cool.
There are a few important things that people need to be aware of, aren't there if they are going to have a walk around a place like this after dark?
But I think it would be really important to plan a safe route, not getting too close to water, not getting too close to maybe cliff edges. Always have a torch handy and the phone with you. And really, I would advise asking the location for guidelines as well.
Go and enjoy a well earned rest!
Yeah, definitely.!
It's so different. Cragside at night to Cragside in the daytime. This experience isn't something exclusive to Cragside. This is an experience you can have in your own back garden outside the front of your house, in your local park. Get outside experience the night time, all the sounds, the smells, even the sight if you can see anything! It's just a completely different world and one that everybody should feel that they can get out and enjoy.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the National Trust Podcast. To be the first to hear new episodes make sure to follow or subscribe in your favourite podcast player. We’ll be back soon but until then from me Kate Martin, goodbye.