The best part of my job is working with people I'm sure will take professional bat work and ecology to the next level in the future and helping them to move their careers forward. Here, Ash Ronaldson describes her first summer with us as a seasonal field ecologist.
First, a quick introduction: I’m Ash, a mature student in the final year of my BSc in Ecology. I’ve worked and volunteered in many different sectors and roles over the years, but a career involving bats in some way has always been the dream. It took me an awfully long time to discover that bat surveying is an actual, real thing that I could get paid to do, but here I am at last! I enjoyed my first season so much that I wrote a little about it on my LinkedIn, and David kindly invited me to expand on that here.
I couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect summer job if I
tried, nor a better company to start my ecology career with. I’ve learned more
in these three months than I imagined possible; from bat ecology, calls and
legal protections, to what goes into a survey report, how bat consultancy
“works”, and radio tracking.
One of the biggest highlights was getting to see swarming
behaviour during dawn surveys - I always knew that bats communicated to make
group decisions about roosting locations, but I had never seen the process in
action before. A bat will land briefly (indicating potential roost location)
before speedily taking off again, somehow managing not to collide with all the
others flying around it. This can continue for a while, sometimes with a few
bats choosing to enter the roost or all going somewhere else entirely. On these
surveys, my job was to keep track of the location of roost entrances (or exits
on sunset surveys), counting how many bats entered or emerged from the area of
the building I’d been assigned to watch. I have to say, this is far easier said
than done when there are multiple roost entrances, hundreds of bats flying
around you, and you’re a bit busy grinning like an idiot because it’s your
first swarm and you can’t believe you’re really being paid to stand there.
Every surveyor has a detector with an earpiece, and we are
given lots of training before embarking on surveys so that we can identify any
species of bat present. It can be tricky though, and this is where surveys with
multiple species (my record is five in one night!) were a particularly helpful
treat. No amount of listening to online clips compares to having several
species fly past you one after the other - suddenly the differences between
calls “click” into place (somewhat literally!) in your mind.
Also helpful with this learning curve is the way that surveys at DDAL (David Dodds Associates Ltd.) are run; when anyone sees or hears a bat, this is communicated via radio to the lead surveyor who is roaming between us. I picked up some great ID tips this way – if someone was unsure what they’d heard, they would describe the call, and the lead surveyor would help identify the species. When I heard the same call on my own detector later, I was able to identify it.
What I hadn’t expected was the lead surveyor spending time
with each of us during almost every survey, and how invaluable these chances to
chat with more experienced ecologists would be for me. I’m one of these people
who craves knowledge; the more I learn, the more questions I come up with (and
I had plenty to begin with – sorry, team!). Thankfully, it’s easy to learn from
people so passionate about their work and happy to share their experiences. I
enjoyed this immensely.
To wrap up the season, I had the privilege of (voluntarily)
participating in some bat radio tracking. To facilitate this, a tiny radio
transmitter is carefully attached to the bat’s back (by appropriately trained
and licenced professionals), and the bat is safely released where it was found.
The challenge for the team each evening - paired up for safety and with radios
for communication - was to use receivers with large antennas to track down the
location of our roosting tagged bats, then follow them as they left to see where
they would forage and eventually choose to roost for the night. Up and down
hills, over rough terrain and slipping in mud we went, sometimes losing the
signal several times in an evening, and wandering around in circles in the dark
or triangulating with another team to find it again. Much as I grumped about
the hills, it really was a lot of fun!
Sadly, the 2021 season has now come to a close. Although some nights were less enjoyable than others
(drizzly urban surveys with far more humans than bats, for example), I
genuinely learned something new on every single one. Being part of such a
welcoming, supportive team has been a privilege, and I can’t wait to see what
next year holds.
Ash
linkedin.com/ashronaldson | t: @NotFraxinus
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