Lia came up from Bristol for an intensive 5 day survey of woods in Bedfordshire.She bought with her a small mountain of kit: harp traps, songmeters, autobats,video camera, infra red light,crammed into her car. One of the first jobs on her arrival was checking the harp traps – no mean feat in our small house.
Then it was time for a cuppa and some fiendishly complex logistical planing so that things would run smoothly when 8 more volunteers came to help out,l while Jude retreated to make sure there was a sufficiency of cake .
We were also joined that night by Ruth, who had come to a woodland survey last week week the hope of seeing a barbastelle She and Aidan set up a mist net some distance from the harp traps at a spot where we had previously caught barbastelles. Much to her delight, they caught not one barbastelle but three. Aidan has taken some lovely photos. (I will add the when he gets a chance to send them to me)
The harp traps caught 2 post lactating females and a male brown long eared bats in full breeding condition. Lia videoed the trap so she can check if any bats escaped from the harp trap. The song meters recorded passing bats so she can assess how representative the bats caught were of the bats i the area.
The tired and intrepid researcher staggered home in the early hours, and grabbed a few hours sleep.