Winter
Winter is generally perceived to be a quiet time for our native wildlife with many species lying dormant or going into hibernation and we have to admit sometimes it’s quite tempting for the Ecologist to do the same. But all is not what it seems, were currently busy undertaking a number of hibernation surveys for bats on some very different buildings. Both winter surveys have been conducted using a combination of internal inspections by suitably licensed and experienced ecologists and remote recording using the latest Anabat devices.
The first site is a barn in rural North Yorkshire, the building is modern but has been constructed in a traditional style. The building has been monitored regularly over the past 18 months and has been found to house a brown long eared bat (BLE) maternity colony, common pipistrelle roosts and a mystery myotis bat roost during the summer surveys.
The winter surveys have been quite interesting with up to 8 BLE bats and up to 14 dozy looking pipistrelle bats found during the inspections. However, the most interesting result is from the remote data which has found pipistrelle bats to be echo-locating within the building and outside throughout the winter period so far, not so dozy after all!
The second site is a Georgian estate set in picturesque North Nottinghamshire. A number of buildings are included within the survey including a Georgian Hall, stables, brew house and a canal bridge. Our survey has so far encompassed of daytime internal inspections, external inspections via a cherry picker and a remote survey using Anabat recording devices. The internal inspections have revealed bat droppings throughout the buildings (with later DNA analysis confirming the three 3 samples taken as brown long eared) and one very deceased brown long eared bat. However, again the remote survey data is interesting with no recordings of bats from within the buildings but a relatively high number of pipistrelle calls from bats over the canal (upstream from the bridge). So as yet no hibernating bats found but we will keep you posted as the survey continues.
So far from snoozing through this winter, it appears both the bats and us ecologists are keeping busy!
