Into the dark

I've been doing a lot of bat surveys recently, which usually involves sitting around looking for bats.  Tonight's bat survey was a bit different.  The building is a known brown long-eared roost and our survey team was privileged enough to have a look around the building with our licensed colleagues.

Sixteen bats were seen getting ready for a night on the wing, but perhaps more interesting was the array of insects hiding in the building in the complete dark.  There were several peacock and small tortoiseshell butterflies roosting up, along with many herald moths.

Stars of the show were a large number of spiders, not everyones cup of tea.  At work I'm fortunate enough to have the county spider recorder on hand to help with ID.  To my surprise and delight the spider was the cave spider, a species which lives its entire life in complete darkness.  Tick!