5 Species of Bats in one evening in our Parish

I took three other Penkridge people along to the Bat Walk organised by British Waterways at Gailey Pools on the evening of the 24th August. Paul - British Waterways Ecologist - lead about 16 people around the pools for a couple of hours. I had my own bat detector but Paul distributed half a dozen around the group and also brought along an expensive and very sensitive one that recorded all the bat calls it heard and we were able to analyse the sonagrams on a laptop computer with the special software at the end of the walk.

Paul was able to demonstrate the difference in the patterns of the sonagrams between the species. We eventually decided that we had heard four, and possibly five, different species during the walk. Noctule, Common Pipistrelle, Soprano Pipistrelle, Daubenton's and possibly Brown Long-eared.

Gailey Pools is in the parish of Penkridge and the Swamp Conservation Group of Penkridge is shortly going to begin a survey to try and establish the species that inhabit our parish and what buildings and habitats they use for breeding, roosting and feeding. With this batwalk around Gailey we have established that Gailey Pools is an important area, not only because of its Heronry on the island of the Lower Pool, but also because of the bats that are to be found feeding there.