Visit to Brum Bats

Bob was invited to give a talk at BrumBats last night on the scientific projects the Bedfordshire Bat Group has done over the years.

I went along for the ride, and what a ride it was – traffic delays meant a journey which should only take an hour and a half took us three hours. Fortunately we still arrived to in time to eat a smashing meal prepared by Chris Sherlock before we headed off to the talk, where we were greeted with cake ( there’s something we have in common with them). Bob was a bit startled to see one of our members there. He explained that he had joined BrumBats before he moved south and was coming to Brum for a weekend and thought he would drop in. Also there were Denise and David who we know from our Trinibats trip

Listening to Bob’s talk it was quite alarming to see just how much the bat group has done from the early days in 1988 up to the present day.

 

I think the audience was equally impressed and were particularly interested and how we analysed our data to get an overview. We gave them a warts and all account and included some work which had stalled whe we got distracted  and discussed the effect of 20;20 hindsight. Brumbat members managed to stay awake throughout and there was some keen questioning.

Then equipped with a bit of cake for the journey made by BCT’s Lisa Wortledg we who ran off to Northern Ireland that afternoon to avoid us) and several bottles of Birmingham brewed ale we headed off home. This time the M42 was trouble free, but  then Bob made the mistake of saying ” should be straight forward now “- so of course it wasn’t. The Highways Agency had chosen to close a number of roads and Bob had some difficulty in picking a route home, but at least it only took 2 hours.

It is always great to meet other groups, though if truth be told we could have done without the challenge of the journey

On the way home we developed the hypothesis that the presence of go0d quality cake correlates with the niceness of a bat group.