What the bat group does

The Bedfordshire Bat group carries out a number of surveys

where we monitor bat activity on a regular basis

Table 1

Where	When	1st survey	restrictions
Stockgrove Park	alternate Mondays from April to September	1988	none
Pipistrelle survey	alternate Thursdays from April to September	1999	members only
Whipsnade Zoo survey	1st Tuesday from April to September	2005	priority to members and ZSL volunteers
Whipsnade extra	3 dates in May July& September	2008	priority to members and ZSL volunteers
Sandy survey	3 dates in May June and September	2007	none , but you need to book a place
Hibernaculum checks	17 sites are checked in January February and December	1989	Members only, must be over 16
Harrold Odell Country Park	3 dates in May June and August	2008	none

In addition we organise other events on a more irregular basis. Some provisional dates are fixed in advance, but final details are decided ad hoc depending on what we find and additional dates may be added at short notice (for example if we radiotag a bat). To be kept up to date on these you will need to be on the e mailing list.

If we are going onto private land, for insurance purposes, we may have to restrict attendance to bat group members

It is probably best to build some experience on the more regular surveys before taking part in these.

Tab;e 2

What		When
Woodland surveys	bat detector surveys	some dates are decided in advance but we are very flexible
Radiotagging		depends of when we capture a suitable bat
Roost monitoring		John Adams has been monitoring his pipistrelle roost since 1988
Bat box monitoring		in addition to the monitoring of existing boxes we are involved in a programme of installing new ones
Roost visits		visiting bat roosts to give roost owner more information/advice about their tenants

A major part of the bat group's work is the collation of data which is produced from surveys and from reports from the general public. This is published in the Annual Report issued to members and also the BNHS Journal. Records are also passed to the Bat Conservation Trust's monitoring programme and to The Bedfordshire Biological Records Office.

Table 3


Collection and collation of bat records	from our surveys and from members of the public
Analysis of records	We are actively examining the data we have collected over the past twenty years, so we can identify priority areas to survey in 2008
Provision of records to consultants	We make a charge for searching the bat group database which was begun in 1988 . The income from this is a major source of funding for projects and equipment

The bat group is also involved in raising public awareness of bats. This is an area where we are currently very stretched and would welcome additional volunteers as we are having to turn down bookings. We will provide any training and resources you may fee you need.

Table 4

What
Talks about bats
Bat walks	Most of these are organised by third parties . We provide walk leaders and leaflets
Providing stalls at public events
Other educational projects	In 2007 we concentrated our efforts on the Count Bat Project which was funded by BCT
Website	Relaunched in March 2005 and updated quarterly

If you would like us to be involved in an event you are planning, get in touch as far ahead as you can, as these get booked up very quickly

Table 5

New for 2008
Our twentieth birthday
Brown long eared bat diet project	analysis of moth wings at long eared night roosts
Queen's Park	The Count Bat project funding has gone but we haven't and in Feb 2008 we found we had got some additional Count Bat funding
New surveys in North Bedfordshire	see Table 1 above
Car surveys	After trial run in 2007, we are planning a series of these for 2008.
Tetrad tag	After twenty years of collecting records, there are still some 2km squares where we have no records. Click here for the map of missing tetrads