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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Noctules, Boxes and dangling bat-workers

During 2007 and 2008 I spent some time on investigating the distribution of Noctules (Nyctalus noctula) in south-east Scotland, a region where the species was traditionally considered scarce and probably beyond it's natural range. I gathered together incidental records from many bat-workers (thanks!), some focussed car surveys and records from commercial bat surveys carried out by a number of consultants, including me.

The result was a clear indication that Noctules are widespread in the Borders and Lothians regions and probably at a greater density than was previously realised. The results were presented in a poster at the B.C.T. Scottish bat Conference in November 2008. If you're interested you can download a copy as a .PDF file here: http://www.plecotus.net/Noctule-poster.pdf (You are free to distribute this information, in the interests of bat conservation, but please attribute it)

One evening in September I was relaxing in the bar at Preston Montford Field Centre, near Shrewsbury during a training course. My phone made one of the irritating noises that mobiles make, to tell me I had received a text from Carol and Nigel, both active members of Lothians Bat Group. They attached a photo, with the tongue-in-cheek message "do you know what this is?!" You're probably ahead of me here - it was a Noctule, of course. To rub my nose in it, they had found it in a bat box at a country park 2 miles from my home. If I hadn't been on the course I would probably have been there when the boxes were checked. Grumpy wasn't the word for my response....

To their credit, Carol and Nigel had found the first ever Noctule in a bat box in Scotland and it resulted in some positive press coverage for bat conservation. Fast forward two weeks when I was checking bat boxes at another country park, also in Midlothian and believe it or not, there was another Noctule. Like Nigel and Carol's this was an adult female, squeezed into a slim bat box. She was a delight to handle: very relaxed, even when I placed her on a log to photograph her, before returning her to her box. She was also kind enough to give up some Spinturnix acuminatus mites (well, I was happy about it, even if my companions were a little taken aback).

To put this in context, these two animals were both found in boxes in a county where I can count previous records of Noctules in flight on my fingers. Was it coincidence (or was it the same bat, with a sense of humour?) or does this tie in with our new knowledge of the spread of Noctules? It was certainly a surprise in an area with many bat box schemes and two decades history of only ever finding Pipistrelles in them. By coincidence, in 2007 and 2008 a small colony of Natterer's Bats were found in a West Lothian bat box, so these Noctules seemed too good to be true.

Stuart Smith, chairman of Lothians Bat Group (and one of the grandees of Scottish bat-work), came up with an unusual plan to respond to these new records by installing some new bat boxes, higher than normal, something he had seen at a Vincent Wildlife Trust site in Dorset. Most bat boxes in the Lothians are between 12 and 20 feet (3.7-6.1m ) above ground. Noctules are tree-roosting bats, with a tendency to roost in tree holes, often high up, so higher boxes makes sense. The problem is that 20 feet is the maximum height for access by ladder, without extra safety measures and skills.

The solution? Suspended bat boxes! We used Schwegler woodcrete bat boxes, suspended from pulleys attached to high branches. Wire rope is used to pull the boxes up to full height -around 40-45 feet above ground (12.3-13.8m) - and tied off on bolts mounted on the tree trunk. These are at ladder height, to prevent the local "yoof" from reaching them. When we need to check and clean the boxes we will simply climb a ladder to normal height, unwind the wire rope from the bolts and lower the box to ground level. Once finished, we simply haul the box back to the top of the tree and tie off the wire rope once more. Ingenious!

Now, there is a chicken and egg problem here: how to get 40 feet up to mount the pulley? The Bat Group is lucky to have access to the services of a professional tree-climber, who also has an affinity for bats. George used his skills to climb the trees and install pulleys for us, making it look easy, as tree climbers always do. However, it's very hard work: you need to combine a high level of physical fitness with some somewhat counter-intuitive skills. Come to think of it, strolling about at the top of a tall tree as about as counter-intuitive as it's possible to be!

Watching a bat-box being hauled 40 feet into the top of a tree was quite exciting. Whether they will attract Noctules remains to be seen...

With work over for the day, George offered a couple of group members the opportunity to try out tree climbing techniques (at very low height) and so, trussed up and roped to the tree, we took our turns at making fools of ourselves. I had tried my hand at this in the past, so probably should have known better, but didn't.

An advantage of this being my blog is that you won't get to see my feeble attempt at tree climbing. However, this seems a good moment to wreak revenge on Carol for last year's Noctule text message. You have to hand it to her: she's enjoying herself, even if she isn't making much progress up the tree!

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My website: http://plecotus.co.uk/

Bat-workers & golf carts: be very afraid!

At this time of year there seems little for a bat-worker to do. Hibernaculum surveys are strictly limited, to avoid the risk of disturbance and there are only so many site visits one can do before running out of enthusiasm for assessing bat potential! These are the days when the mind wanders back to highlights of "real" bat work, before the onset of winter.

One such highlight last year was an autumn visit to a well-known golf and country club in the Borders to check and clean the bat boxes. A large group of bat-workers from Lothians and Borders Bat Groups assembled to go round the boxes, checking them for bats and recording the amount of droppings (an indication of how well each box has been used during the year).


I'm not entirely sure whether it shows trust or naivete, but we were allowed the use of a small fleet of golf carts in order to get round the course with our ladders. If you have never seen a conga line of golf carts, full of bat workers and equipment snaking across the landscape you have never known fear!


Fortunately we were accompanied by the course green keeper and one of his team, which probably helped curb the temptation to descend to the level of "Wacky Races". More importantly, it allowed them to see for themselves the great work they have done, making and erecting bat boxes around the course.

Annual bat box checks have several practical purposes. Firstly, the boxes can be cleaned out in readiness for the next year and any damage identified for fixing. Secondly, we have the opportunity to assess the extent to which each box has been used, providing data which shows the progress of the individual bat box scheme and, when combined with other schemes, a rough measure of how bat populations are doing locally. Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, less experienced bat group members get an opportunity to get close to live bats. Many very active bat workers (including me) started off with bats, with the thrill of seeing a Pipistrelle in a bat box.


In South East Scotland it is extremely rare to find anything other than Pipistrelles in bat boxes (with some intriguing exceptions in recent months) and this site was true to that experience. In autumn boxes tend to be used by male Pipistrelles as the base for a mating territory and it is usual to find boxes occupied by either an individual male or by a male and a harem of females. Where boxes are grouped together it is unusual to find more than one occupied, as they would lie within the same territory. The droppings however, often reveal that other boxes have been used, either earlier in the year or in differing conditions, with bats moving between boxes to find optimum temperate conditions.

The course is home to some remarkable buildings and is known to be home to roosts of Brown long-eared Bats (Plecotus auritus), Common Pipistrelles (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) and Soprano Pipistrelles (Pipistrellus pygmaeus). Best of all is a large maternity colony of Daubenton's Bats Myotis daubentonii). Although the roost was breaking up at the time of our visit, we were still able to glimpse a group of around 20 bats clustered together. I took the photograph below earlier in the year, when there were over 50 bats present, with a cluster of Nycteribia kolenatii bat-fly pupae clustered around (you can see them better in the lower picture).


It was a very successful day in terms of finding bats, recording useful data and giving people the chance to get close to bats. Best of all it was that very rare thing: a chance for bat-workers to get together in daylight!

Please note: handling or disturbing bats is a criminal offence without an appropriate licence issued by a statutory nature conservation organisation (Scottish Natural Heritage, Natural England, Countryside Council for Wales, Northern Ireland Environment Agency).

Most bat groups welcome new members and give them the opportunity to take part in events like this. To find your local bat group contact the Bat Conservation Trust

My website: David Dodds Ecology

The name of the bat

I can't help thinking that the English language has failed to play fair by the bat. I mean what sort of word is "bat" to describe such a graceful, enigmatic and fascinating animal? The one distinction the word has is that it was given to a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Bat, built in 1896. HMS Bat served in the Mediterranean and in home waters during the First World War, before being sold for scrap in 1919. The name was revived during World War II for a naval tug.

So where does this odd little word come from? It is thought to be derived from the middle english word for the bat: bakke, possibly as a result of confusion with the latin word for a night-flying insect: blatta. Bakke itself is likely to be a shortened version of the old Danish word for a bat: natbakka, or "night flapper". Sticking with our Scandinavian forebears, the old Norse had a wonderful name for them: leorblaka, which means "leather flapper". That name must come from someone who had seen a bat's wing close up. It's such an evocative name it's almost worth reviving it!

Other forebears of ours (an awful lot of old races contributed to Britain over the years) also had some interesting names for the bat. The old english word for bat is hreremus (pronounced rear-mouse), meaning "shaky mouse". Whoever came up with that name had certainly watched a foraging pipistrelle!

When the Romans came to Britain they brought the latin word for bat: vespertilio, derived from vesper, their word for "evening". From this comes the family name for all our British bats, apart from the two horseshoe bat species: vespertilionidae. It's also the original root for another bat word. In old Italian vespertilio became vipistrello and thence the modern Italian word for bat: Pipistrello, which of course led to Pipistrelle.

Other modern European languages have interesting names for bats. The Germans say fledermaus, literally "flying mouse". For an ecologist, trying to convince people to live in harmony with bats, it's a little disappointing that so many names for bats refer to mice, at risk of tainting bats with their image as vermin. I suppose it's inevitable.

The French use the word chauve-souris, which translates literally as "bald mouse" This seems odd, until we discover that it's derived from the ancient Greek calva sorix, meaning "owl mouse", which makes more sense.

For me the prize must go to the Spanish. Their name for the bat is derived from the latin mures caeculus or "blind mouse". That's bad on two fronts, as the bat is neither blind nor a mouse, but all is forgiven, because in modern Spanish the word becomes murcielago, the name given by Lamborghini to one of the fastest and most lavish supercars in the world. That's more like it! 

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What's in a bat box?

Well, hopefully...bats.

When the first bat-box schemes were launched, in the 1970s, using sponsorship from viewers of BBC TV's "Nationwide" programme, there was one design: the standard wooden bat-box. They're not unlike a blue-tit nest-box, but instead of a hole on the front, the bats access by climbing a roughened board and entering through a narrow slit at the base. Easy and cheap to make from a single plank of rough timber, there must be many thousands of them around the country and they're as effective as ever.

Bat boxes do a great job of supporting bat conservation by raising awareness, providing an easy way of monitoring local bat populations, and by providing bats with roosting opportunities in places where alternatives are limited. Annual bat box occupancy checks carried out by local Bat Groups also give a great opportunity for novice bat-workers to see bats close up (strictly supervised by someone with an appropriate licence).

Today, many designs are available, to the extent that choosing bat-boxes is almost as hard as choosing a new car! Do we want it to emulate narrow crevices, to suit Pipistrelles, or bigger tree-holes, to suit Noctules? Do we want cheap and cheerful wooden construction, or shall we push out the boat and use deluxe woodcrete bat-boxes? How about a wedge shape? Should the door be on the top or at the front? Should it be painted black? And so on...

Here in the Lothians, a bat box containing anything other than Pipistrelles is sadly a rarity, though a box full of Pips is still a welcome sight. Whilst the traditional boxes are well-used, they seem to prefer slimmer, more crevice-like designs. However, the most popular design seems to be the dome-shaped woodcrete (a cement and sawdust mix) boxes, made by Schwegler. They're not cheap, but the occupancy rates are definitely higher.

Anyone thinking of putting up bat boxes would be well-advised to take advice from their local Bat Group. A little experience and foresight in choosing the right boxes and positioning them correctly will make a big difference to their success...or otherwise.

Advice from the Bat Conservation Trust: http://www.bats.org.uk/helpline/documents/Batboxes-yourquestionsanswered.pdf

My website: http://plecotus.co.uk/