Every Day is a School Day

It was over a pint in the Foundry Arms that the idea was hatched. It had been done before in Yorkshire. It had even been tried in Norfolk many years ago without success but we thought we’d like to give it a try ourselves.
The luring of Petrels close to shore at night has been done at Filey in Yorkshire for years. We thought we’d ask them for advice and set up a rig of our own (thanks guys). It took us over a year to get things together and then built. When we tested things out Andy could hear it loudly from his garden when I played it in mine, some half a mile away, so we knew the rig was up to the job.
This week we gave it a try for real. Standing under the cliffs we blasted out a selection of Petrel calls into the North Sea.
A few beers added to a beautiful night. The waning moon rose over the sea and distantly over Lincolnshire a lightning storm flicked and sparked among towering clouds. Satellites screamed across the sky above and a surprising number of moths entertained us.
If you exclude the fox that came to see what the hell was going on and the couple of bats that flicked by after three hours we hadn’t attracted anything; but we learned a lot. What we should do next time, what we could do and what we mustn’t do all added to our knowledge. Every day is a school day.
No Petrels this time … but watch this space.

If you can’t get the above video to play please try this link
http://youtu.be/5CQJg06qi6c