Now is usually the time when we start getting busy on the Bat Care front. Like many bat group we have our own Bat Care Team, though we take in fewer bats than some groups. We usually get about thirty calls a year.
All our Bat Care Team are experienced bat folk as we think it is important that people know how a healthy bat goes about its business. Following a training day earlier in the year the ” new bugs” are getting a chance to help out. Dick and Geraldine , who run the Wardown Park surveys and who many of you have met at stalls, had their first call out yesterday and had to improvise dinner for their new housemate.
Yesterday we got a phone call from Soggy asking if we could go to Houghton Regis Academy to collect a grounded bat.
The bat had been found yesterday afternoon, and kept overnight in the school caretaker’s bungalow. We drove over to Houghton Regis, having decided that the bat was most likely to be a Noctule or a Pipistrelle.
Turned out to be a Common Pipistrelle, think it’s a male, and will be taking him to Lakeside tonight, to have some one more expert give the bat a once over and decide on what happens next.Bat has been eating well, and taking mashed up Whiskas Turkey flavour cat food from tweezers, a messy eater. Bat has not made any attempts to fly as yet, sitting quite calmly on Dick’s gloved hand to be fed. We purchased digital scales from Maplins this afternoon, weight is just under 4 grams, after deducting the weight of the CD sleeve he was popped into for the process.