Getting on well in Wytham and Wiltshire

After a good first few nights of bat catching it was time to increase the survey effort and do a full week of surveying.

Bechsteins bat (Photo: Paul Kennedy)

On Monday I was with Avon Bat Group at a site overlooking Bath just on the Bristol and Avon side of the Wiltshire border. Choosing the trap location is one of the most important parts of the evening as if you don’t have you trap set up properly in a good location you reduce your chances of catching. At this site not only did I have to consider the density of the undergrowth, the tree species in the area and the distance from paths, I also had to make sure my traps were far enough away from the group of kids that were messing around. I needn’t have worried however, as the rain shower that passed over before we were due to start the survey got rid of them. Our captures at this site were top draw; we caught three of my target species as well as a Bechstein’s bat which is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List has requires special measures for conservation under European legislation.

Tuesday I was at a well studied woodland called Wytham in Oxfordshire. We caught five different species including Leislers and Noctule. The Noctule is the UK’s biggest bat with a wing span approaching half a meter. Leislers are a slightly smaller, but none the less impressive relative, both in the Nyctalus genus.

Noctule on the left, Leislers on the right
(Photo: Dani Linton)

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were spent at Wiltshire Wildlife Trust sites. All sites produced some good captures and at one reserve they were so impressed with our capture of a Barbastelle bat they put out a press release. Off the back of this I did an interview with local radio station Spire FM and the Western Daily Press wrote an article: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Bat-man-uncovers-mystery-resident-oldest-nature/story-19680756-detail/story.html.

Leislers left, Noctule right. Next to the Noctule this Leislers
looks tiny, but it is still one of the UK's largest bats!
(Photo: Dani Linton)

I’ll also be on BBC Radio Wiltshire this coming Sunday (25^th August 2013) at around 11:30am doing an interview with Marie Lennon as part of her nature programme “Wild About Wiltshire”!

After a week of catching a good number of bats and diversity species in the South, including some really rare species, it was time to head up the M5 to Herefordshire and then the Midlands to see what woodland slightly further north had to offer. Check back soon and all will be revealed!

I am studying for a self-funded MSc at the University of Bristol with equipment and support from the Bat Conservation Trust http://www.bats.org.uk/ and training and guidance from Daniel Whitby of AEWC Ltd. If you would like to contact me about my research please email: philip.brown@bristol.ac.uk

The first six surveys of the season

I am well under way with my data collection carrying out surveys five or six nights a week. At the end of July I gently eased myself into my field season by surveying two sites near Bristol, two in Bedfordshire and two and Cambridgeshire over two weeks.

The very first site I surveyed was on a steep hill which was made even trickier to negotiate when carrying the heavy equipment into the woods to set up the traps. This first night went reasonably well, we caught eight bats of three species, unfortunately none of my target species (Brandt’s Whiskered or Alcathoe). At this site there were no previous bat records, so everything we caught was new information for the site.

Barbastelle caught in Bedfordshire
(Photo: Bob Cornes)

The next night was also spent walking up and down hills, this time close to the River Avon. The Avon bat group monitor the bat boxes on the site, but have never had a Daubentons in a box. We caught two of them in addition to a couple of other species.

Then it was off to Cambridgeshire for my least successful night so far. We caught one Brown Long Eared bat and then got rained on, so had to pack up early and go home. The less said about that survey the better!

Just over the border into Bedfordshire was more successful. In addition to a few other bats we caught a Barbastelle bat. This was the first of this species I’d seen and handled. I was certainly very privileged as this bat is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN red list http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/2553/0 and is that rare that it is not only protected by UK law (all bats in the UK are protected by law) but also by European legislation.

Serotine, notice the use of heavy duty gloves for this big old bat
(Photo: Philip Gould)

Another night in Bedfordshire saw us catch a Serotine, this was a first for me too (Bedfordshire is obviously the place to be)! The Serotine is a large bat which has broad wings and flys quite slowly.

Then it was back to Cambridgeshire. To finish the week and my first few surveys off nicely we caught my first Whiskered, Brandt’s or Alcathoe bat. We got a couple of droppings from the bat which will undergo DNA analysis to give a positive species identification. We recorded as many morphological features as possible and I’ve got a good idea as to what species I think it is. I won’t be able to find out if I am right until October when I do the DNA analysis. Watch this space!

I am studying for a self-funded MSc at the University of Bristol with equipment and support from the Bat Conservation Trust http://www.bats.org.uk/ and training and guidance from Daniel Whitby of AEWC Ltd. If you would like to contact me about my research please email: philip.brown@bristol.ac.uk

Poo Tastic!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been collecting as much bat poo as possible…

“Why?” you may ask… well – Analysing the DNA of a poo from a bat, is one of the best, least invasive ways to get a positive identification of a bat’s species.

“Why is this important?” you may ask… well – When trying to identify bats that look very similar and echolocate at almost the same frequencies, it is almost impossible to tell them apart.

“So what are you getting at?” you may ask… well – Without a knowledge of the requirements of an individual species, it is very hard to try and conserve that species or make any informed decisions about things that may affect that species such as habitat management.

Weighing a bat in a bag while waiting for it to poo!
(Photo: Steven Roe)

And let me clarify that first sentence; I won’t just be collecting any old poo. I’m specifically looking to collect poo from as many Brandt’s, Whiskered and Alcthaoe bats as possible as these three species are morphologically very similar (I just wanted to get your attention earlier).

So after all of that science talk, now let’s get to the bit you are most interested in:

How do you collect poo from a bat?

First of all you have to catch a bat. There are various methods, I will be using a type of trap called a harp trap (check back soon, I’ll be posting a blog about trapping in the near future). Next you put the bat into a cloth bag and hang it up on a branch for around 10 minutes. Nine times out of ten within this time period the bat will have done a poo. Once you have taken the bat out of the bag, carefully move the poo from the bag into a little tube where the poo will be stored until it is time for DNA analysis. I’ll be storing my bat poo filled tubes in a freezer. At university we have a designated bat poo freezer, but when I am elsewhere in the country they’ll have to be stored in between the peas and ice cream!

Multiple boxes of tubes containing bat poo at
the University of Bristol collected by others researchers
for other studies
(Photo: Philip Brown)

Bat poo looks similar to mouse poo but is very different in texture. Mice eat all sorts of things, a lot of which are moist or contain water. This means that their poo would squidge if you squeezed it between your fingers. UK bats only eat insects. Insect have dry bodies which are made out of something called chitin. This results in bat poo being dry, which if you were to squidge between your fingers, would crumble.

So, to further expand on that inaccurate first sentence, I will be collecting crumbly bat poo from any Brandt’s, Whiskered and Alcthoe bats that I catch so I can analyse the DNA to work out exactly which species I have caught as these three species look almost identical and it is hard to tell them apart.

I am studying for a self-funded MSc at the University of Bristol with equipment and support from the Bat Conservation Trust http://www.bats.org.uk/ and training and guidance from Daniel Whitby of AEWC Ltd. If you would like to contact me about my research please email: philip.brown@bristol.ac.uk

The stage is set...

Seven months into my MSc and the really exciting part is almost upon us. Since January I have been training to handle bats, designing my study, reading around the subject and identifying lots of woodlands to survey in. Over the next two months I will be going out into woodlands across the Midlands and South of England to collect data for my research by catching bats!

Me learning to set up a harp trap back
in the cold weather in May.
(Photo: Paul Kennedy)

I am looking to collect data to further describe the distribution in the UK of a newly discovered species, the Alcathoe bat. This bat was only described as a new species to science as recently as 2001 with the first records coming from Greece. Since then it has been found in various countries across Europe including the UK in the last couple of years. At present it is only known in a few locations up and down the country. I’m hoping to find a few more…

The Alcathoe bat is almost identical to two other species, the Brandt’s and Whiskered bats. As these three bat species look so similar, not a lot is known about the difference between them. Only very knowledgeable experts or DNA analysis of tissue samples or droppings can tell them apart, even their echolocation calls are very similar.

I am by no means an expert so will be collecting droppings from the bats (if you are wondering how I intend to do this check back soon as I’ll be posting a “poo-tastic” blog in the near future).These droppings can then be tested to determine which species of bat have produced them.

Is it Whiskered, Brandt's or Alcathoe bat???
(Photo:Bob Cornes)

By putting traps up in different types of woodlands (woodlands close to or far away from water bodies), I can investigate if different bat species use different types of woodland to hunt their insect prey.

By putting traps up in different locations within the same wood (one trap on the edge of the woodland and the other in the middle), I can also investigate if different bat species use different areas within the same woodland.

If the weather is kind to us this summer and I am able to trap at enough sites I hope to be able to describe any differences between the foraging areas of Brandt’s, Whiskered and Alcathoe bats. I might even be able to describe the distribution of the newly discovered Alcathoe bat in the UK!

I am studying for a self funded MSc at the University of Bristol with equipment and support from the Bat Conservation Trust http://www.bats.org.uk/ and training and guidance from Daniel Whitby of AEWC Ltd. If you would like to contact me about my research please email: philip.brown@bristol.ac.uk