{"id":320,"date":"2019-05-28T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniofglos.blog\/cheltenhamwildlife\/?p=320"},"modified":"2024-05-30T09:53:48","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T09:53:48","slug":"bat-walks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/2019\/05\/28\/bat-walks\/","title":{"rendered":"Bat walks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On May 28th<\/sup>\nwe held our first public bat walk at Pittville Park<\/strong>, one of many more to come. These bat walks\nwill build on the work we have done previously in the park and help us learn\nmore about the bat species in the area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Members of the public were able to come out, learn about the bats found within the park, and see them fly and hear their calls. The Boathouse Caf\u00e9 stayed open till late for us<\/strong> and did a great job serving hot drinks before the event. We were also joined by the county moth recorder<\/strong> \u2013 Robert Homan @Vc33Moths<\/a> for an evening of public moth trapping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evening was a\ngreat success \u2013the weather was lovely, in total we over 250 people out<\/strong>\nin the park tonight. It was amazing to see so many people out, particularly so\nmany families. On the bat walk we recorded 4 species of bat \u2013 pipistrelle,\nsoprano pipistrelle and noctules flying between the trees and paths. Over the\nlake we could see Daubenton\u2019s bats skimming the surface feeding on the insects\nthere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bat walk was\naided by students from the university who has just completed the Bat\nConservation Trust\u2019s Future Recorders Scheme. This ran in the university in\nearly May, funded by a granny from the Janet Trotter Trust, and gave 30\nstudents training in identifying UK bat species and using bat detectors, and\nsoftware, to analyse their calls. I hope this will be useful for their future\ncareers and stimulate their interest to keep recording bats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert gave us some more detail of his results from the night:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmost effective method of monitoring the moth population of any particular site\nis to use a light source emitting plenty of ultra-violet light; not so much\nmoths to a flame, as moths to an 80w bulb. However, effectiveness can be\nmitigated by unreliability as moth trapping is highly dependent on weather\nconditions. Thus, on the evening of 28th May, a clear sky and a slowing\ndropping temperature limited the catch to just 7 species of moth. By contrast,\nunder more favourable\nconditions 36 species were recorded during a trapping session in June 2018. The\nMay total consisted of fairly common late spring species, the most abundant of\nwhich was the Common Swift. The caterpillars of this species feed on the roots\nof grasses and herbaceous plants and the sizeable population in the Park reflects\nthe no-mowing policy evident in the strip of woodland between the lake and the\nAlbermarle Gate car park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The species list for the 28th May was: Common Swift * (10), Common Pug * (1), Willow Beauty * (1), Light Emerald (1), Treble Lines * (2), Heart and Dart (2) and Flame Shoulder * (1). There are no other records from the Park east of Tommy Taylor’s Lane for the species marked *.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On May 28th we held our first public bat walk at Pittville Park, one of many more to come. These bat walks will build on the work we have done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bats"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":419,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.glos.ac.uk\/bats\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}