Bats Study Group

Questions are often asked about the use and provision of bat boxes.

Tony has offered some words of advice on the subject and there is a pdf leaflet available from the bat Conservation Trust (see below for a download).

The Siting of bat boxes.

Tony Atkinson explains how local recording fits in with the national monitoring schemes:

National Bat Monitoring Programme: 2011. A. Atkinson

The following information will help to identify the sounds from the Heterodyne Bat Detectors available in our Equipment Inventory.

Identification of individual species is difficult as unless you are working with bats, it is unlikely that you can get close enough to recognise the key features. Echolocation is probably the most helpful approach, but even here some training is required and the equipment to identify individual species is not cheap.

Summer Homes of bats in Cornwall

Pip       Ble       Ghs       Lhs       Wh/Br       Daub       Noct       Ser

Hunting Habitat of the commoner Bats- typical locations

2009 Bats Report for LAPWG.

Since I start the year with the hibernacula surveys, I’ll deal with them first.

There were small rises for the Downgate mine site, but we are only talking 2 or 3 bats anyway with most of the underground sites I visit. There were 3 Lesser Horseshoe bats this year as against 1 last year. The shaft at Greystone Wood usually holds more bats than any other site I visit. This year we had up to 22 Lesser Horseshoe, but surprisingly only 1 Greater Horseshoe!

Background on the status of bats in our area up to 2009, probably taken from the old website.

We regular visit set sites to see how populations change over the years

Armstrong Woods. 

On Friday Jan. 9th. Mary and I went to Armstrongs Wood. I was anxious to have a look at the new polystyrene bat boxes to see if anything used them during the winter. To my surprise and delight there were about 10 Noctules in two groups in the second box along. All you need is a reasonable torch to see them!