A brief description of my
time in Herefordshire would go something along the lines of: as the food got
better, the bat catching got better! Monday afternoon I got to my site, had a
look around, decided where to put my traps and then went for dinner at a nearby Wetherspoons pub, they didn’t have the fish and chips I ordered so I had a
burger, which was ok but nothing great. That evening we only caught five bats
which is one of my lowest haul of bats I’ve had so far this summer.
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| Our visitor for the evening, a Smooth Newt (Photo: Denise Foster) |
Monday night I stayed in
the spare room of my main contact for the area. She lives in a lovely cottage
and the room I was staying in had beautiful views of the countryside and Welsh
mountains in the distance. On Tuesday morning she made bacon and egg for
breakfast, then for lunch she gave me what was essentially a huge ploughman’s. My
tank was full and I certainly needed the energy that evening from the food consumed
during the day. The first bat we caught was a Lesser Horseshoe. This was the
first one of these bats I’ve seen and handled so I was pretty excited. It flew
into the trap before we had switched the lure on, so it was a good start to the
survey which continued in the same vein. We caught 12 bats in total and also
had an unexpected visitor. A Smooth Newt strolled into the middle of our
processing point to say hello!
On Wednesday I made my way
to my parents’ house in Leicester and surveyed a woodland on the edge of
Rutland Water, a massive reservoir created in the 70’s in the middle of the
smallest county in the country. Unfortunately there was a strong wind blowing
across the water and there were not many insects about or many bats in the
traps or even on the detectors.
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| Just one of the 17 bats caught on Derbyshire/Leicestershire border: A Noctule just before release (Photo:Steven Roe) |
Thursday was far more successful,
this time on the Leicestershire/Derbyshire border. We caught a record 17 bats
three of which were my target species. I was privileged enough to be driven
around the site on a little buggy by the estate manager which made transporting
the equipment and getting around the site a lot quicker and easier. Just as we
were about to start packing away at the end of the survey the heavens opened
and everyone got soaked. With the buggy we managed to keep most of the
equipment dry as well as the bats that threw themselves into the traps at the
end of the survey.
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| One of the three bats that we took droppings from for DNA analysis to confirm if it is Brandt's, Whiskered or Alcathoe bat (Photo: Steven Roe) |
On Friday I certainly
could have done with the buggy from Thursday night. There were only two of us to
carry the equipment and we had a long walk across two fields, then into and
through the woodland to where I wanted to set up the traps. During the survey
we didn’t catch much and the walk back to the car with the equipment was made
even harder, as this time it was all up hill.
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
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