Lonely cottage, eerie survey

 

Lonely cottage, high in the hills,

For centuries a home, derelict today.

Echoes of history, looking over my shoulder

Feels I’m intruding, in my modern way.

 

I’ve a job to do, set aside the ghosts

Searching for bats, swallows take part.

Stepping with care, timbers have rotted,

Wavering torchlight, thumping heart.

 

Take a deep breath, focus on searching,

A crumbly dropping, fallen from where?

A hundred crevices, decay and collapse,

More droppings found, ghosts quietly stare.

 

Not enough jigsaw, the picture’s unclear,

Sunset and dawn, to fill in the gaps.

Apologies ghosts, I’ll disturb you again,

Or could it be, I amuse you perhaps?

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An under-rated bat detector - the Peersonic RPA3

I first bought a Peersonic bat detector in 2014. Having tried it out I rapidly bought a further seven and I’ve just ordered another four. So what is it about this detector that makes me part with money so willingly, in a world which is increasingly cluttered with bat detector models and (in the case of at least one manufacturer) some quite vocal marketing?

Peersonic RPA3 bat detector

When you first pick up a Peersonic RPA3 (the current model) it doesn’t scream “Buy me, use me, I’m a really good detector.” In fact, it looks unprepossessing and, if appearance is a factor in your choice of machine you’ll probably walk away and look at some of the many shiny, well-marketed options available from Anabat, Wildlife Acoustics or Elekon.

Bats, as well as occupying a lot of my spare time are also my profession, so, whilst professional image is important, functionality is what really floats my boat when we’re buying sets of detectors for our team to use. Do we want fancy colours or gadgets? No. Do we want visible sonograms to distract our team members from where we really need them to be focussing - the building they’re surveying? Of course not. So for our purposes the bland cream case of the RPA3 is absolutely fine. (By the way, our supervising ecologists are mobile around our survey sites with machines which DO show live sonograms).

So what does it do? Well, it records full-spectrum WAV sound, whilst allowing you to listen to frequency division or tunable heterodyne output. The optional date and timestamp module does exactly what it says on the tin. Recording is to an SD card, mounted internally and the unit is powered by three AA batteries and we’ve seen no evidence of it being power-hungry.

The screen is small, but displays sufficient information to be useful. It displays the menu items as you scroll through using a rotary knob on the side (which also doubles as the heterodyne tuning control) and a button on each side for enter and back. When in use it displays the peak frequency of the sounds currently heard – useful for on-the-hoof Pipistrelle species ID, it also gives an amplitude reading in dB, which I don’t find too useful, though the matching bar-graph is handy. You can choose to record bat passes manually or automatically and in the latter mode the screen is blocked for a moment or two whilst the machine finishes the recording, which can be mildly irritating.

You’ve got to be tough to do bat surveys north of the border – an RPA3 in action, with hundreds of hungry Scottish midges.

In use we’ve found the detector to be as sensitive as most other detectors currently available and more so than some. It fits nicely into the hand, depending I guess, on the size of your hands. The case has a wrist-strap (yet ours still get dropped occasionally. Go figure.) and a threaded hole on the rear, which allows tripod mounting, if you’re so inclined (Peersonic also make a static monitoring version, which utilises this).

The ability to switch in use between FD and Het. is useful, especially when supported by the peak frequency indication. We tend to use FD mostly, but when Pipistrelle foraging activity is high, the ability to switch to Het, and listen for later-emerging species by tuning down to around 35-40kHz is handy (possibly less so in areas with a broader species assemblage than Scotland). As the machine records in full-spectrum, regardless of what mode you are listening in, this gives a measure of security from missing anything inportant.

One possible weakness, depending on how you use your detector is that the RPA3 lacks a loudspeaker, so you use headphones. Purists will tell you (rightly) that this is the best way to listen to bat calls, if you want to hear them clearly. However, I’m not a purist and I’m not keen on random, possibly dodgy people being able to sneak up behind our surveyors at night. We also like them to be able to hear their two-way radios, so headphones don’t work well for us. And this is where another factor comes into play. Peersonic is a UK-based company, run by engineer, Peter Flory, who isn’t just willing to help with random requests, he positively seems to relish them. So our machines were modified by Peter to work with mono earpieces, rather than stereo headphones.

We have now racked up several thousand surveyor hours using these machines and we’ve really only had three problems, all of which were easily rectified. Firstly, if a machine is dropped (which you really shouldn’t do, but hey, it’s dark, it’s cold and we’re tired…) it will sometimes stop working. However, the fix for this is easy, as it is simply caused by the internal SD card being dislodged. Undo two screws, pop it back in and you’re back in action. We’ve had a couple of machines ‘skipping’, when moving through the menus. This turns out to be caused by the nut on the rotary knob being too tight and slackening it slightly resolved the problem.

One of our survey kits, ready for use with personal radios, torches, batteries and four RPA3 detectors

The only other issue we’ve had was a case cracking slightly around the battery compartment. The problem here was that the battery holder grips the batteries tightly, so we tend to lever out the AA batteries, putting a strain on the case. One of our cases developed some cracks after this had been done a few hundred times and had to be replaced. It’s the only one though and at about £40 it didn’t exactly break the bank, which raises another angle on Peersonic. In an age of built-in redundancy and frequent upgrades Peter assures me that the RPA3 has been designed to be future-proofed and repairable.

So to sum up, the Peersonic RPA3 is a sensitive and effective bat detector, doing everything you need for commercial bat surveys and, but I’ve saved one factor to the end. The price: At the time of writing, Peersonic retail the standard RPA3 at just £245 + VAT and carriage. I’ve told Peter he could and should double that price, but he’s committed to making the machine freely available - for bat group or casual use this is a lot of bat detector for an affordable price. So whatever you do, don’t overlook Peersonic, just because there are shinier machines out there, made by companies with bigger marketing budgets.

Peersonic website: www.peersonic.co.uk/

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Bat surveys - where odd stuff is normal

Bat surveys are one of the few things in life where one gets the chance to poke about in all sorts of unusual buildings, sometimes occupied, sometimes derelict and sometimes ruined, but always showing evidence of what a strange species human beings are. Here are a few of my favourites.

I never found out why this disused South Lanarkshire timber factory had creepy dolls scattered inside it.

The discovery of this decapitated rabbit on a tree-stump was made especially disturbing as it was outside the entrance to a disused Dundee asylum.

Staring at a building during bat emergence surveys requires tenacity at the best of times, but this frankly repulsive mural added an extra challenge for our survey team.

I have no idea who Gary is or what he really looks like, but as this Midlothian warehouse has now been demolished it's nice that his colleagues' caring views can be immortalised here.

This derelict building in Argyll had clearly been visited by a graffiti artist with psychic powers - these two pciture are a perfect prediction of our arrival.

In the dim light of a derelict woollen mill this heap of tailor’s dummies made my heart jump for a moment!

It’s good when clients pay attention to my advice about not disturbing a known bat roost…

It looked like the kids at this Dundee Primary School knew we were coming!

This derelict Glasgow hospital clearly hadn’t been somebody’s favourite place to work.

We’ve had a few sunset surveys with noisy Herring Gull colonies, but I’m not sure what this person’s issue was…

I don’t know who Shifty is or was, but I wouldn’t like to meet him on a dark night.

I could fill dozens of posts with the amazing graffiti at Polphail, Argyll, but this one in my favourite. Sadly it’s demolished now, replaced by two bat houses.

It’s great when a client really gets excited about the work we do…

Ok, I confess – this was us. There was paint left in the can used to mark 52 roosts we had found on this huge site and we couldn’t resist!

Profound graffiti in this derelict hospital in St. Andrews.

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Ignore the gods of bat-work at your peril.

 

It's been a while since I wrote a blog post, but I am increasingly worried that many-up-and coming ecologists are unaware of a vitally important aspect of professional bat-work, which I need to correct.

I’ve never been particularly superstitious, but when I realise that the bat survey season is beginning to loom I tend to reach for the cuddly toy bat which sits beside my desk, and give it’s belly a little rub. I’m a firm believer that bat surveys are governed by a set of especially capricious little bat-gods, with many gremlin-esque tendencies, always on the look-out for reasons to trip us up.

Never underestimate the importance of this aspect of pre-survey preparation

 Nobody really knows how many bat-gods there are, or what they are called, but they appear to have divided the work of a bat-worker up between them, so whatever the circumstances, never doubt that there is at least one bat-god keeping an eye on you and waiting to screw up your survey.

The first thing to know about the bat-gods is that they hate being taken for granted. “This should be a good site for bats” will always be taken by them as a challenge and at best you will spend two hours watching a lonely moth slowly fluttering around. But if you were especially enthusiastic, they may get sufficiently irate to cause a group of neds to turn up on your survey site. The best way to avoid this is to start every survey by saying, very clearly “I DON’T THINK THERE ARE LIKELY TO BE ANY BATS HERE.” The bat-gods, appeased, will then go looking for some other lonely bat-worker to bother. Unless, that is, you commit some other sin that offends them.

Another thing which which will bring the ire of the bat-gods down upon you is the appeasing of clients. If the client should show up during your survey, asking how it’s going (often a distracting event in itself), you will be tempted to tell them something positive, perhaps indicating that the survey is going well. Resist that temptation at all costs! The bat-gods, hearing you, will immediately plot some mischievous vengeance on you for failing to recognise their all-powerful position. In such a situation they will gather together in a little huddle and negotiate amongst themselves as to which bat-god will have the enjoyment of making their displeasure plain to you.

 The better-known bat-gods include:

·        The wee fat sleepy bat-god, who is in charge of making it bloody hard to get up for a dawn survey.

·        The mischievous bat-god of barked shins, who skips around the survey site, merrily scattering trip-hazards.

·        The devious bat-god who specialises in making curtains move in unoccupied buildings and making shadows resemble creepy figures.

·        The bat-god of annoying neighbours, who uses a crow-bar and a cattle-prod to extract nosey old buggers from their comfy arm-chairs and out to interfere with your survey.

·        The bat-god of batteries uses a long straw to suck power out of your detector battery, which is why your freshly-charged battery still doesn’t last to the end of the survey

·        The bat-god of padlocks plays with the minds of site owners and managers, to ensure they forget to arrange access for you.

·        The bat-god of weather has more ways of messing with you than you can imagine, but he’s especially fond of hail in July.

·        The bat-god of lost kit delights in hiding thermometers, notebooks etc. so they are left behind at the end of the survey.

·        The bat-god of urban surveys is a particularly nasty little god-let, who has at his beck and call hordes of snotty-nosed horrors specially trained to demand to know what you’re doing and why.

·        I’m happy to say I haven’t had to deal with the bat-god of car batteries for a while, but this is because I always remember to say at the end of a successful survey “I hope my car starts!”

·        As for the bat-god of car keys, the less said about him the better!

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A very unfortunate hat-trick

For those outside the UK and a handful of Commonwealth countries I should explain that the term hat trick is derived from cricket, a game inexplicable to anyone who doesn't love it. A hat trick occurs when a bowler takes three wickets in succession, an unusual and impressive achievement for a bowler. The hat-trick I am referring is certainly not impressive. I would also prefer it if it were unusual, but I fear it may be getting less so. Three times this month I have been asked by clients to help them resolve problems caused to them by sub-standard bat surveys.

Sadly this appears to be a growing problem in this country. Local planning authorities (LPAs) are obliged to consider protected species such as bats before issuing permissions such as planning consent, listed building consent or demolition warrants. LPAs are becoming increasingly aware of their responsibilities and as a result their requests for bat surveys to be carried out are becoming more commonplace. This is all well and good, as the intended result is that bat roosts are discovered in time and appropriate licensing, mitigation and compensation measures included in a project. The result is the protection of species which already face a wide variety of threats.

The problem is that there is an ever-growing band of people who have spotted this niche in the market and are attempting to fill it. There's nothing wrong with that, after all I'm one of them and my company David Dodds Associates Ltd carries out hundreds of successful bat surveys every year, as do many other companies. But bat surveys aren't cheap - they involve expensive equipment and  teams of trained professionals, working unsociable hours. And where there's gold there will always be gold-diggers.

It's hard for someone to establish the bona fides of someone offering to carry out bat surveys. Does having a bat license mean you have the required skills, equipment, experience etc? Not necessarily. How about membership of CIEEM, the professional body for ecologists? Sadly no, it means very little (though CIEEM are working on that).  The result is that people occasionally find themselves hiring someone who looks the part, but turns out to be a disaster in the making.

Timing is all in bat surveying. Night time surveys cannot be carried out during at least five months of the year (sometimes as much as seven months, depending on latitude and prevailing weather). Where a client gets caught out with a sub-standard surveyor sometimes their project is held up for half a year before the damage can be resolved, often causing great expense and a negative view of bat conservation.

So how does the problem arise? In my experience there are a number of types of sub-standard bat survey, and each seems to stem from a different source:

1. The well-meaning amateur. This is often a friend, relative or neighbour who knows something about bats and owns a bat detector. They are flattered to be asked to do a survey and possibly excited at the prospect of earning some money from bat conservation, which is normally a spare time enthusiasm. Their naivety means they either don't know about the BCT Bat Survey Guidelines or their lack of resources means they cut corners. They often lack the breadth of experience to interpret what they find. Their reports reflect their naivety and often don't provide the information an LPA requires to determine a planning application, causing the report to be rejected.
2. The over-worked junior ecologist. Big ecology companies face a problem: professional ecology is bottom heavy and experience is at a premium. The result is that junior ecologists are often sent out to do bat surveys with a low level of experience, sometimes assisted by random office staff who have even less experience. Bat surveying is not just about putting a standard process into effect - it's about being able to understand what you see, often cryptic and fragmentary data. Back at the office the sub-standard data is written up into a highly professional report, adopting the advice and reviews of experienced seniors. But if the core field-work wasn't up to scratch the result is often embarrassment when a project is halted because a bat roost is discovered which was missed or misinterpreted as something less significant than it actually was.
3. The cowboy ecologist. Sadly these exist in professional ecology as in any other field: people who cut corners, do half a job, or invent survey results (really - it happens!). They then tell their client whatever they want to hear and melt away. Often they get away with it, but sometimes their work results in a project being halted when a bat roost is found, causing embarrassment, expense and delay for the unfortunate client.
4. The desperate one-man band. The last ten years has seen a proliferation of small ecology companies. Most are excellent free-lance ecologists, working within their limits to deliver great professional standards. But from time to time someone gets desperate to pay the mortgage and takes on a bat survey job they are not geared up for. Their report will stand out like a sore thumb as the night-time surveys will have been carried out by one person, rather than a proper survey team covering all elevations of a building and bat roosts get missed.
5. The complete barking nonsense. A few years ago I was shown a bat survey report submitted to an LPA in support of a planning application. It was a single sheet of letter-headed paper from a pest control company, stating that their operative had sat in the attic for half an hour with an infra-red camera and hadn't seen any bats (Note - if this seems reasonable you really need to read the BCT Bat Survey Guidelines!). The best part was that the council ecologist had a fight on his hands over this, as one of the local councillors decided to weigh in and back to pest control company! 

Unfortunately in this era of austerity and cut-backs fewer and fewer LPAs can afford to have in-house ecologists reviewing reports. Increasingly bat survey reports are being accepted without being read by someone who has the knowledge and experience to be able to interpret them. This means that sub-standard surveys don't always get picked up, meaning those who produce them don't learn from their mistakes (or less charitably, they get away with their actions) and they go on to repeat them. 

The result of all this is that from time to time people who commission a bat survey in good faith find themselves with a rejected survey report and a long wait until next summer to commission a new one. Others find their projects halted because a bat roost has not been identified by sub-standard surveys and is then discovered or worse destroyed during work. Others still apply for a derogation license, based on the survey report and discover that either the survey was inadequate or the report doesn't provide a suitable mitigation and compensation scheme and their application is refused.

I don't mean this post to suggest that professional ecology in the UK isn't fit for purpose. We are fortunate to have well-developed conservation law and due process to maximise it's effectiveness. And we have many, many excellent professional ecologists. None of us is perfect and anyone is entitled to make a mistake and learn from it. But bat conservation is not well served when people hire apparent professionals in good faith and are let down. And that happens too often.

10 Pet hates of an ecological consultant

I'm a fairly laid back person and I learned long ago that its not worth getting wound up about things. But in my work as a Consultant Ecologist and bat specialist there are certain irritants that crop up time and again. I thought it might be fun to create a top ten, so here it is.

10 - People who think all bats are the same. We have 18 species of bat in the UK and at least nine here in Scotland. Each occupies a distinct niche, with behaviour, habitat, roosting habits etc entirely different from the rest. Why then do people (including some of the poorer consultant ecologists) insist on talking about bats as though they were one unvarying species?

9 - Jokes about "bat man". I like a joke as much as the next person. But I mean, really? Bat man? Satirical wit of the highest calibre it ain't! And guess what? I've heard it before! Just once or thrice.

8 - Rigid adherence to the BCT Bat Survey Guidelines. The word "guideline" gives it away. This document is an excellent starting point in planning a bat survey, but to rigidly adhere to its content, without consideration or understanding is just plain silly. You should be able to explain why you're deviating from the guidelines, but an ecologist who lacks the knowledge and experience to do so also lacks sufficient knowledge and experience to be carrying out bat surveys in the first place. Enough said!

7 - Sub-standard equipment used in bat surveys. It's simple: a good quality broadband bat detector and a means of recording calls during a survey for later confirmation of species if necessary. Yet often commercial bat surveys are done with heterodyne bat detectors, often cheap and nasty ones too. One large Scottish consultancy regularly sends out bat survey teams with only enough bat detectors for half of them to be equipped at all. And that verges on criminal negligence.

6 - Clients who ask for bat surveys at the end of September. Here in Scotland the bat survey season ends at the end of September. We told you that months ago. We wrote it in a report for you. We reminded you in an email. We even explained why. Next time should we tattoo it on your forehead? Would that help?

5 - Attention-seekers who pretend to be scared of bats. A tiny number of people have a genuine phobia about bats. Often they are also phobic about birds. It's hard for them and I'm sympathetic. But I have no time for the much greater number of people who pretend to be phobic because they want to be the centre of attention. I've seen genuine hysteria and it's very different.

4 - Clients who pretend they don't know about a bat roost in the hope we won't notice it. Really? You have 500 Soprano Pipistrelles in your roof and you seriously hoped I wouldn't notice? Not only is it very silly but if you need our professional assistance we need to work together and that involves trust. So stop playing silly buggers...

3 - People calling me a bat expert. The more I work with bats the more I realise how much there is we still don't know about   these amazing and enigmatic creatures. Yes I know some stuff, but I can't echolocate, I can't turn in high speed flight a whisker away from a wall and I can't  slow my heartbeat to once a minute. If you want a real bat expert ask a bat. 

2 - Garden centre bat boxes. There are many designs of bat box around. Some are more successful than others. Some work better for this species or that one or in certain types of location. What is never going to work is the type which is on sale in garden centres and pet shops with a horizontal plywood perch at the base, at a right angle to the entrance slot. The bats need to emerge from the entrance and dive to rapidly gain airspeed. If they do so with one of those bat boxes they'll get a sudden headache! Which is why they are a waste of money.

1 - Overly complicated bat detectors. I'm male, therefore I like gadgets. Big shiny gadgets with lots of buttons and knobs make my eyes go wide with excitement. Some bat detector manufacturers have seen me coming and are making ever more clever and complex machines so I can spend my pennies on shiny toys. But bat detectors aren't like other gadgets. We use them in the dark. At night. When we're cold. And tired. And fed up by the lack of bat activity. And when we keep tripping over things. And we're trying to juggle a detector, a recorder, a torch and a notebook and pen. By all means make them clever and fill them with whistles and bangs. But for heavens sake make them so I can work them in the field without needing a masters in geekiness and a 100 page manual!

So there's my annual rant. Now I can return to being calm, collected and relaxed about my work.

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