In the Beginning...

My interest in bats stemmed from a childhood fascination in all things natural history. Like many kids growing up in semi rural Worcestershire in the 70's and 80's I spent much of my time outside in the local lanes and fields, I fished in the Piddle Brook and the river Avon and explored in Tiddesley wood. I collected butterflies and moths, brought home frogs and leeches and all manner of weird and ugly beasties that fascinated me and absolutely horrified my mother, and generally felt at one with nature.
I loved the unusual creatures in this world, and found little or no interest in lions or elephants that seemed to always grace the TV wildlife programs. Perhaps it was this interest in the less well known or understood creatures that sparked my interest in bats, for in my early teens I was obsessed with them. I used to watch them from my bedroom window, and with the advantage of youth, be able to hear them too (what I now know to he their social calls). I knew they were Pipistrelles, I could name all the diagnostic parts of their external anatomy, and recite all the then known UK species. But at the tender age of 11 all I had to enjoy these enigmatic creatures were my eyes and a copy of Which Bat Is It?... A bat detector was a dream. I even wrote to Dr Bob stebbings and asked for a circuit diagram in the misguided hope me or my dad could make one.  He sent me one too, but it never did transfer off the paper into something I yearned for.. It would be 30 odd years later before I would be able to listen in at my leisure, and in the mean time all I could do was watch them.

And I thank the earth that I could, because watching bats is ace!

The above is an extract from the introduction to a wee booklet I am writing called "How to Watch Bats"

New Bat Box design finally occupied!

Earlier in the year members of the bat group were tasked with designing a new bat box.  Martin Allen designed the one above, and has remained vacant all summer. Until today when it was discovered that three pipistrelles were hauled up in one of the slots.  Martin normally attends the checking but was away this weekend and missed the event.  However Andy, Kate and Sally were there to commemorate the event with a bit of bolt action...don't know why, it just seemed a good idea at the time.

What is the attraction?

Yesterday my mind was wandering, I hadn't given it permission, but like my 5 year old son, it didn't seem to matter anyway.  I was busy writing the previous blog post, adding stuff to facebook and the groups newsgroup site, and I thought this is a lot of work, why am I bothering...  its just chuffing bats.

Which made me look back as to why I was interested in them, and whether this is similar to those feeling of other members.  Take birding for example, according to wiki there are some 596 species of birds on the British list as of 15 December 2011, five hundred and ninety six.  That's quite a lot. Even if you put aside the stupidly rare ones you are unlikely to see, that still leaves, well, quite a lot, and certainly enough to keep you interested for years and years.  But bats, there are 17-18 ish species and of those here in Worcestershire we could conceivably encounter15 of those.  Even those encounters are not quite as it seems. 
Would a birder accept hearing a weak and distant bird song as actually seeing the bird.  The clue here folks is in the word seeing.  We spend huge amounts of our time both professionally, and get this, just for fun, listening for things we cant see....or hear ourselves.  But never the less we do do it, and whats more we bloody well enjoy doing it. Now I know most of us get a real kick out of all things natural history, and may get a fix from studying other specific animals and plants, but its hard to find anything else very similar to going out batting. 
For almost everyone who is introduced to our bats, this completely disconnected approach is what gets us hooked in the first place.  Because they ley person cannot go and grab a bat, shake it by the wing and say "how do you do" (I have seen someone do that, or was that a dream), doing a bat walk is the only way of experiencing them. So is the first part of the point of batting simply experiencing them?
Of course there are times when we can see them flapping about doing their thing, but this is always short lived as the cosmos draws its inky veil over their shenanigans, and we are left to rely on artificial splats plops and warbles emitted form our artificial ears to remind us they are even still there. And these artificial ears or "bat detectors" as we in the know call them, become an almost physical part of our soul.  Go out at night without one, and you feel incomplete (go on admit it). So what attracts people young old, male and female to this seemingly crazy pass time.  We cannot even claim its because we are eccentric and British, for this phenomenon happens all over the world, even France. 

We are an...I would say elite, but that, a bit like my ramblings, is pretentious tosh,. We are the few, the few that can be bothered to go out, at night looking at seemingly nothing and reminding those less fortunate than ourselves, that these wonderful little animals are there, and that they deserve our attention, whether they bloody well want it or not.

I have just thought...what about the Badger Society?  They have only ONE specie to enthuse about...whats that all about?, bunch of weirdos if you ask me....

An Army of Volunteers is the Backbone of the Group

Just very recently members of the Worcestershire Bat Group completed a summer of exciting field survey, helping out with a Worcestershire Wildlife Trust in their project to Study the rare Bechsteins Bat at Grafton Wood. 

As this blog emerged after the survey period, this is a bit of a retrospective review, but in these few paragraphs I hope to give a flavour of what we as a group did, what we learned and what we hope to do now.

Between 2010 and 2012, WBG took part in the Bat Conservation Trusts Bechsteins Bat Project.  The principle aim was to identify new breeding sites and to see for the first time what the species range in England is. Until this point the Bat Group had not really ventured in significant surveys, and this would hopefully be a precursor to bigger and better things for us.  However, this was a project that was not taken on board lightly, and the group met formally to discuss the pro and cons of participating.  The team was originally lead by Stephen West and Fergus Henderson, with many other members playing supportive rolls.  The unanimous consensus was to go for it!  We new there were risks, mainly failure to deliver the considerable survey work required, but the benefits in terms of training, experience and of course finding out if any of the blighters were out there in Worcestershire was such that this was an opportunity the group would be stoopid to miss. 

To cut a long story short, two summers of late night survey involving harp traps with acoustic lures resulted in  a remarkable five breeding populations being discovered.  This currently makes Worcestershire the most northerly breeding population of this bat species in Europe and probable the World - Hoorah for Worcestershire!  Did I say this was the short version...  Anyway one of those sites was WWTs Grafton Wood, principally renowned and managed for its rare array of butterflies.  Now it has a new star, and the trust sought and received funding to undertake a programme of trapping, tagging and tracking (TTT) to see how and where the bats foraged, roosted etc.  The necessary skills of bat workers experienced in TTT were provided by Johnny Birks and Eric Palmer Swift Ecology.  The grunts, to coin a military term, were drafted in from members of our very own Worcestershire Bat Group, (Horrah again).

You should hear the double disk version of this tale....

The Bat Group members role was to assist in the trapping, and we were introduced to how to set up and use harp traps and mist nets.  When we were fortunate to catch Bechsteins it was noted that many were underweight for the time of year <8g, and too small to be able to carry the 0.5g transmitter.  However a few were large enough to tag.  Now the principle role of the group kicked in, as we now had to track the bats in and out of the wood.  Things did not go quite to plan, as some of the transmitters failed, but overall a great deal of information about the ecology of this particular population has come to light. 

Johnny and Ferg managed to find a shed tag that is a hairs width in thickness, in the dark is woodland understorey

The task of radio tracking is one of those things that at once is surprisingly dull and monotonous, yet at the same time exciting and interesting, as all things geeky tend to be. We all wanted to do more!  Sometimes the bats stayed in a very small area of woodland, other times they buggered off completely, only being found several hours later miles away from the wood, hauled up in an innocuous tree in the middle of nowhere.

Maternity roost trees were found, but the most surprising thing was the fact that the bats frequently left the wood and foraged many kilometers away, sometimes in open countryside.  The interpretation of the results is ongoing, and will be published in due course.

 The T shirt says Worcestershire BAT Group, not Worcestershire FAT group.  That T shirt is in the wash.

  

Kate looking every bit a bond girl...just swap receiver for a harpoon gun!

All this data was collected by tracking and recording in detail the movements of the bats from the moment they left the roost at dusk, till they returned, often somewhere else a long way away, at dawn.  Many members did two or three and some even more of these stints resulting in being awake for over 48hours at a time.  This is where my Red Bull addiction paid off.  Every one chipped in and gave it their all, at times it was cold and wet, other times pleasantly mild.  The crap summer made sure that the wood was quagmire most of the time, and the midges kept many of us company all night, bless em.

I know that James Hitchcock of the WWT was pleased with the work and dedication of our members, without whom the project could not have succeeded.  I whole heartedly concur!

Worcester South Quay - Lights, Lesser Horseshoes and and Urban Bat Landscape.

Last night I had the pleasure of joining a goodly number of our members (16 and a dog) for a walk and talk along South Quay in Worcester. The reason for this event was twofold. One, we wanted to look at and discuss the issue of the new (ish) lighting that has been installed along the riverside, and to update members on the Cathedral Bat Project.

The issue of lighting and bats is complex, and while some research is being undertaken, its still quite early days. What is known though is certain bat species, most in fact, will avoid lit areas like the plague. Given that the site has, as far as we are aware, the only urban population of Lesser Horseshoe Bats in Britain ( I expect if we inquired further we would find others further south, but like our Bechsteins bats, I think we have the most northerly urban LHBs!), this lighting thing is not good news.


Ed Leszczynski of the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust Consultancy, who lead the evening, has worked closely on the lighting scheme, but alas, despite the surveys and recommendations, the lighting was installed without consideration of the environmental impacts (specifically to the bats). In fact it was all installed BEFORE they received the ecological assessment report.Ed has studied the bat activity along this stretch if the Severn for over 10 years and the area had a high level of bat activity. Since the installation of the lighting this has all but disappeared.  How much this is due to the lights, and how much is due to the god awful summer weather is open to debate, but it is clear the lights will have had a major impact.

The lights are there of course for a reason. The revamped south quay and riverside walk was a big scheme to improve the route for pedestrians and cyclists, linking the city with Diglis and the new pedestrian bridge to the south. It is a great scheme, and popular too, and it must be remembered that there are many users and needs for this site. It is not a bat sanctuary, but an urban environment. This path is oddly a 'highway' and so legislation dictates the amount of lighting needed, but there are environmental considerations that should have been taken into account and clearly have not. No one is suggesting the lights have to go, but something needs to happen. In fact its not just the bats that don't like it, many residents hate the intensity of the lights, as do pedestrians and cyclists who are simply dazzled by the bright lighting.

So what's to be done? Well it's not all doom and gloom, because through the concerted efforts of Ed and others, the councils are listening, and with some simple inexpensive modifications the impact of the lighting can be greatly reduced. Discussions are ongoing as I type and I look forward to reporting back the outcome in due course.

The evening also introduced members to the Cathedral Lesser Horseshoe Bats. Last year, in a serendipitous chain of events, a roosting and hibernation site of LHBs was discovered in one of the outlying Cathedral structures. Alas this site was extremely vulnerable, with anti social behavior, vandalism etc occurring within it. The latter was of great concern to the Cathedral authorities who proposed more robust fencing off of the site. Through a successful partnership with them we have been monitoring the bats monthly and worked to ensure the fencing and grills are of a recognized bat friendly design. The Bat Conservation Trust has also provided a grant for us to install environmental monitoring loggers and bat boxes to aid recording and management of the site once it is secure. Until the grills are installed the details of this site are being kept relatively quite as it remains vulnerable to vandalism and disturbance.  Special thanks goes to Graham Davidson who has worked on the Natural England Licences to enable this project to proceed, as well as leading much of the monitoring work to date.

So from the end of this month we hope the site will be secure and that it will become a successful hibernation site for the Lesser Horseshoe and other species of bats. In addition there may be serious research potential next year, including radio tracking to determine their foraging areas and to locate maternity roosts. All very exiting stuff!

The evening was finished of by the revelation that Ed is into Musical Theater and he gave us a jolly but oh to short a rendition of 'There 'aint nothing but a dame' with wavy jazz hands, and a hop over to the Plough for a well deserved pint, where witty banter continued.

Getting Connected

Now syncing mobile to the blog so that I can feedback news and events from in the field, as if I am going to get a connection in the middle of a wood!

I suppose you have to start somewhere.  As the current chairman of the Worcestershire Bat Group I want to help get across what we do, and how anyone with an interest in wildlife can discover and enjoy some of Britain's most enigmatic and fascinating native mammals.

While the Autumn months advance our way and we turn our back on a bloody awful summer (Except for London 2012 games which were truly awesome), it is perhaps an odd time to start a blog on an animal that will all too soon be going into hibernation, but as I said, I suppose you have to start somewhere.