National Bat Conference.

National Bat Conference.

1. Lesser Horseshoe bats and buildings.
The National Bat Conference was held at Reading University this year. One of the talks was by Henry Schofield of the Vincent Wildlife Trust. The Trust have over may years purchased properties and adapted them as roosts for Horseshoe Bats, particularly Lesser Horseshoes. The talk was a brief introduction to the types of buildings they had adapted and the styles of new bat roosts that had been built. The new buildings were built to look as much like small agricultural buildings or houses as possible. Having undertaken the creation of new roosts over many years the Trust had built up an extensive knowledge of what worked and what didn’t.

They had monitored the types of materials used and which worked best, creating hot and cool areas within roof spaces for the bats to use at different times and tried different methods of ensuring bat access but deterring use by birds etc. The amount of information available upon what worked for Lesser Horseshoe bats was wonderful and the talk was ended by promoting a book that the Trust was releasing about the work they had done over the years. The information provided will be invaluable for work with Horseshoe bats but will also help to plan mitigation for other bat species by guiding people what materials are good and what should be avoided.

The book comes out in late October but I’ve already ordered a copy.