I learned so much about bats and their habitat along the Thames. Thank you for a really interesting evening with a friendly bunch of fellow bat-recorders.

The three of us has a good Brainstorming session to understand how the assisted walks can continue.

As we sat by the Witches cauldron (I mean a Cactus) we had the key ingredients: - Enthusiasm - Funding Applications - Ideas for the Future

With a stirring, Researching, time and Magic, the Assisted walks will continue

That was the question on everyone's mind as they lined up on Richmond riverside, waiting to be assigned a specific bat to count. Soprano, common, nathusius pipistrelle, plus daubentons, noctule and a few other species. We set out bat detectors to their corresponding frequency and lined up on both sides of the river for the final count of the year.

After a slow start the Twickenham side crew found a hotspot at the far side of Marble Hill Park. The walk ended near the White Swan pub after we made about 20 stops every couple of hundred metres. We then marched all the way back to Richmond and convened at the White Cross where Ken very generously got two rounds in.

Luckily the lady from Thames Landscape Strategy was there to Guide us from Marble House to Richmond via the Thames Path.

The weather was nice, we got to smell the fresh water, feel leaves and taste the local drinking establishments.

A lovely group exercise meeting our friends and new people.

Six GoodGymers went on a bar survey! Did you know that t and r are side by side on the key board? This time though, it was a bat survey, not a bar survey!

We met Ken and Philip with the London Bat Group who guided us on our survey along the River Thames counting bat passes with our bat monitors tuned into various frequencies. The bat monitors amplified the echolocation calls of the bats into the audible range of human hearing. We counted several 100 bats in the night with all the data recorded for a scientific study that Ken started in 2008 with the UK Bat Conservation Trust. And luckily half of the group finished the bat survey along the Thames at a pub to conduct a bar survey!

5 GoodGymers turned up at Richmond Bridge with the UK Bat Conservation Trust on Monday night to help run a survey of bats along the River Thames. We met the task owner/coordinator our own GoodGymer Ken and Philip from London Bat Group. We had a quick training on how to use a bat monitor and divided into 2 groups with another 6 volunteers from the community that came out to help with the survey to survey both sides of the River. Both Ken and Philip said that it seemed like an unusually quiet survey night for bats despite the near ideal conditions for bats and it was unclear why but when Ken had tabulated the data the next morning there was a good count and it was only marginally lower and not significantly different from the July count. We counted a total of 323 bats on 21 August (as compared to 349 in July). We did however count a lot more of our biggest UK bats the Noctule and Leisler's bats than any previous survey this year…so yes we do indeed like big bats!