Back to the Bat Cave!

Two Goodgymers came out with 10 other volunteers to help run a bat survey with the UK Bat Conservation Trust in Richmond.

We meet Ken and Philip by Richmond Bridge on Tuesday night for an introduction. Bat monitors were handed out and instructions given to each volunteer to monitor for a specific species of bat tuned to a particular frequency. Instructions on wet sounds, slapping calls and kills calls were taught. We divided into two groups of six to monitor both the Middlesex and Surrey banks of the River Thames.

As sunset approached we headed off into the night following our intrepid bat guides looking for 6 species of target bats called Soprano pipistrelle bats, Common pipistrelle bats, Daubenton's bats, Noctule bats, Nathusius' pipistrelle bats, and Leisler's bats. We walked 100m and would stop and listen for our assigned bat for 2 minutes before going to the next station 100m further up river. We repeated this for 21 stations and at each station our experts would record our findings. These were tabulated and Ken is entering these into a database that has been going since 2008 all part of study that is being looked at to understand lighting impacts and habitat of these key species of mammals. Hopefully more GoodGymers will sign up for the next surveys.