Bat survey season
April 21, 2012
Main bat survey season starting now
The bat survey season starts next month for activity surveys, which we typically undertake to inform developments where there are changes to the landscape which may affect foraging or commuting bats, or where a wind energy development is planned. Activity surveys involve either monthly, or seasonal visits from April to September or October.
Emergence surveys start at the beginning of May, mostly finishing by the end of August - there is a very limited season to identify maternity roosts and other places used by bats for shelter.
We have three licensed in-house bat surveyors, equipped with Petterson Elektronic time expansion detectors which record bat calls and reproduce them as sonagrams using specialist BatSound software. For activity surveys, we also carry out automated monitoring using the Batcorder system - this is a very high quality German system which matches recordings against a database of European bat calls, using software running on a MacBook.
If you think you may need a bat survey in 2012, please call Paul, Claire, Caroline or Sue for an informal chat to discuss your needs.