Last Saturday night, September 15th, we carried out our annual bat survey at UWNR. Conditions were close to perfect - low broken cloud, warm temperatures and light winds.
As ever a very big thank you to Gareth Harris for pulling together a great group of highly knowledgeable ecologists and bat specialists. We set the first traps at around 17.00, then ate a delicious bar-b-q dinner and did our first inspections right on dusk. As well as various nets (mist, harp, triple high), Gareth set up static detectors.
We had a very successful night - and identified these bats:
Serotine, Common Pipistrelle, Soprano Pipistrelle, Whiskered and Daubenton's.
These species were detected - Myotis & Plecotus. Bat detectors are not always able to distinguish individual bats within a species group, hence this more general identification.
Personally for me the highlight of the night was watching the Daubenton's hunt over the lake surface darting furiously in pursuit of invertebrates (midges, small flies, mayflies), using a technique not dissimilar to a osprey - captivating!
A bat being identified…..