Woodland Survey 2007
Piloted in 2005, the Woodland Survey focuses on the rare barbastelle bat. The survey protocol involves walking a route through woodland and recording all bat species using a broadband detector connected to a minidisk or MP3 recorder. While walking the route, surveyors tune a heterodyne detector to 32kHz and listen out for barbastelle calls, recording these on the survey form as "possible barbastelle" or "fairly sure barbastelle" depending on how distinctive the calls sound. The sound recordings are then analysed in order to identify barbastelles and any other bat species encountered during the survey.
In 2007, data have been received from 13 sites so far. Based on identification in the field using heterodyne detectors, 8 sites had "fairly sure barbastelle" records, 2 had "possible barbastelle" records, and 3 sites were thought not to have barbastelles recorded during the surveys. Frequency division recordings were also made and analysis of these should reveal whether barbastelles were recorded at these sites, but in the meantime the map below shows the possible barbastelle records identified in the field. This map will be adjusted when the recordings have been analysed and the species identifications confirmed.
Distribution of Woodland Survey sites and potential barbastelle records 2007