Towards the end of November we had some very windy nights, one of which brought down a particular tree branch. A passerby the next day noticed a bat lying on the ground nearby and Colin went to collect it. It was a female noctule who was very underweight . (She only weighed 17gms, which is light for a noctule) but otherwise uninjured and took her into care. There she will remain until the Spring, when , suitably refreshed she will be released.
Several days later Bob went to meet the person who found the bat and to look at the tree to see if it might have the potential for other roosts and was shown round some land he owns. He described low flying large bats flying over his cow pasture. Bob’s ears at once pricked up as the description he was given sounded very like a serotine. We have been invited to go back and do a detector survey when the Winter is over. We shall be taking him up on this offer as it is some distance from our other sightings of serotines. Such thinks console us in the dark cold nights of winter