The bat group put up fifty boxes in a Bedfordshire wood , following a grant from Costain Carillion, in the beginning of May.
Today, some of the bat group went out to check them. As much to check they could locate them as much as anything, Imagine their surprise that the first 6 boxes yielded three bats, a soprano pipistrelle, a common pipistrelle and a brown long eared bat. By the end of a long day 39 boxes had been checked and 19 bats had been found.
These were weighed and measured, their sex and breeding status recorded before they were returned to their boxes.
In addition we came across two brown long eared roosts.The first ones we have found in this wood.
One of the roosts was quite low in the trunk of tree. It had been used very recently as the droppings at entrance of the hole showed
It was rather harder work checking the actual bat boxes
By the end of the day it was a very tired group headed home. (limping in Aidan’s case as he aggravated an ankle injury) We will try to do the rest of the boxes in the next few days.
Update. The rest of boxes were checked a few days later an we fond two more pipistrelles in the remaining boxes. That gives us a 40% occupancy rate