Bat and Dormouse Survey Armstrong Woods Sunday 12th October

Tony and Steve gave a brief outline of their monitoring work, explaining there were 15 wooden bat boxes, 2 polystyrene ones and 50 dormouse boxes.

Tony set up his bat boxes in 1994 and the dormouse boxes were originally set up a year or two earlier by Steve's father.

Undaunted by the wet weather 16 of us set off equipped with ladder and two new polystyrene bat boxes. It was not until bat box 5 that there was evidence of bats in the form of droppings. It was at that point that we split into 2 groups, one to check the bat boxes and the other to start on the dormouse boxes.

Bat box 7 revealed a cocoon of some sort and on the same tree bat box 8 housed 7 Natterer Bats. The trainees were able to handle and identify them.      

No sooner had the cry gone up for bats found there was a call for a dormice find. Box 15 revealed an adult male and a juvenile. 

They were weighed and inspected and a small tuft of hair carefully tweezered from them for DNA testing. The adult weighed 22g and the juvenile 16g which is about the minimum weight for a youngster to survive the winter hibernation. 

They put on weight quickly so long as there is plenty of available food. Two other boxes had evidence in the form of nests but no more dormice were found.

Polystyrene bat box B had at least 7 Noctule bats, we viewed them by shining a torch up into the box. Box 12 was the only other box occupied and this time it was a Brown Long Eared  bat.

The last job for the bat group was to help Tony place the two new polystyrene boxes in a tree. 

Will the bats prefer the large one or the small one? Hopefully we will find out next year.

At the end of our successful survey the rain stopped and we headed back to the carpark for much needed refreshments.