Bat Walk

by Jackie Tyldesley

On Friday, 15th September, some Wildlife Club members and staff went on a Bat Walk led by Nik Knight (former Head of Biology) up at Hilsea Sports ground. We were also lucky that Lynne, another member of the Hampshire bat group, brought with her two rescue bats, called Brenda and Penelope, which she is looking after as they both have damaged wings.

As it became dark we started to look for bats using bat detectors, using them to look for the characteristics clicks made by the bats at different ultrasonic frequencies when they use echolocation. We detected 3 species of bats during the session, which were Common Pipistrelles, Soprano Pipistrelles and Serotines. Nik and Lynne helped us to identify the species by the frequencies of their sounds. The image below shows the characteristic trace for 2 different bat species. We would like to thank Nik and Lynne for making this evening possible.