Hibernation Results

Hi,

Well over the weekend we visited 15 hibernation sites across Bedfordshire, Saturday saw Danny, Jonathan, Bob, Chris and Martin visit four sites, with a total of 76 bats, with 17 Barbestelles in one, which nearly equalled last years 20.

Sunday saw Bob, Jonathan and Aidan visit the remaining sites and have 42 bats in total, with a new record for the artificial site built over 20 years ago, 5 BLE bats.

For the first time, the number of bats found on the December survey has exceeded 100. We found 118 bats over the weekend:

59 Natterer's
23 Daubenton's
17 Brown Long-Eareds
17 Barbastelles
1 Common Pip
1 unidentified

Thanks goes to those which helped out over the weekend.

Martin

Kent Bat Box update

Hi,

Danny at Priory Park has been experimenting with the Kent Bat box (as reported earlier), he has now been playing with the design of the box and added a further rear chamber. The idea is to see if one: the bats are only using the chamber nearest the tree and Two: to help stop woodpeckers making holes in the first and second chamber. The addition of a third chamber may help stop the woody's getting into at least one chamber therefore making the box use-able.

The pictures right, shows the original box on the left and the new super box on the right

He has also added a tin plate over the first chamber to protect it from the woody's.

When bats are using the boxes again, I'll update everyone.

It is also the first of the hibernation checks this weekend, I'll be leading on Saturday and Bob will be leading on Sunday, I'll report the findings here next week, but if last winters results are anything to go by, I'm expecting good numbers in our largest hibernation site, last year when the weather turned we had 20+ Barbastelles, our best count.

Martin

SonoBlog

If you’re not familiar with sonograms, they are simply graphs of the sounds made by bats with the frequency of the sound on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. To produce a sonogram, you need to make a recording from a frequency division or time expansion detector and feed the recording into suitable software. The sonograms below were made from the Bat Group’s newly acquired Batbox Griffin detector in time expansion mode. The frequencies were reduced by a factor of 10 and the times increased by a factor of 10. The software was Adobe Audition.

The first sonogram shows just over half a second of sound from the social calls which Martin referred to, made at the Luton Hoo hibernaculum last month. There is a rapid series of calls lasting about one tenth of a second (remember to divide the times on the scale by 10 to get the true times), and the series is repeated several times. The bat may have been stationary because the volume of the calls does not vary, and there’s no sign of any echolocation calls. The second sonogram shows one series of calls (the third series from the first sonogram), on a bigger time scale.
The question is: which species? We know there were Natterer’s bats around at the time, but we can’t be sure that this was a Natterer’s calling

Hi,

Well Danny up in the north of the county has been busy checking the kent bat box design against other designs. the picture right shows four pip's using one of the boxes.

He has also been using a design from the vincent trust and this was occupied within 18 days!!

There is one problem with wooden boxes though, woodpeckers!! they love to hammer them.

Danny's solution is to put a thin piece of metal over the hole to protect it, anything thats laying around can be used, in this case a old sign, for now this is protecting the box.

Danny has had some good results with the boxes and is constantly looking for new designs to try, I have come up with a design, that once I have made a few hope to test with Danny's help. Hopefully it will be successful and we can give out the instructions for making them.

M

Back at the beinging of the month, myself and 3 other members went to see if there were any bats swarming around Luton Hoo's artifical Hibernation site. We heard lots of bats including myotis, BLEB, both pip species and Noctule.

A couple of weeks later 5 members went back to confirm the site was being used, this time armed with a harp trap and mist nets, we spent an age waiting and hearing nothing but around 11.00pm we heard a myotis bat.

Not two minutes later he flew into the net, a male natterers in breeding condition, a further three males were netted all of which were in breeding condition.

We can now reveal that this is the first confirmed autunm swarming site in Bedfordshire, which considering the hibernation site has only been in place for around 4 years is an important discovery. Luton Hoo estate (Elite Hotels, Richard Biffen) are very happy about this and are continuing to support our work here, so a big thankyou to Richard for the access permission and continued interest in the bat activity at Luton Hoo.

Recently the group has installed some hibernnation boxes in the largest wooded area in Bedfordshire (Kingswood NNR). The Greensand Trust and Natural England allowed the group to put up two very large boxes and one smaller one.

These will be checked this winter and are in known bat hotspots, but will be monitored every so often, I'll report back the results after the first check, although we are not expecting them to be used for a while.

M

Hi,

We ran a bat care course last weekend, 10 members attended and it looks like the care team is expanding.

I have also been helping out the Dormouse group of late (see picture further down) they are still about and seem to be doing Ok.

M

Hi,

Have not posted for sometime now!!

The noctule hasn't been back, however mum is doing well and gaining some weight.

The group has been fairly busy with the Luton project and other things going on around the town, so far we have made some 50 plus bat boxes to go up in the Luton parks and finally looks like we will be able to do this over winter.

Things are slowing down now (end of season) but we will keep busy finishing off the Luton project and planning projects for next year!!!

M

This is an image of one of the pups droppings, there is a wing clearly vi sable in the centre of the picture.

I have several others with antenna fragments and mandibles fragements.

M

Hi

I have been through several droppings and found wings in all of them so far. This means that he was feeding himself in the wild, as mealworms don't have wings.

He has not returned for some time now, however the box will remain in place just in case he returns over the autunm and winter.