The 2022 Booking System is Open! 

 

Alderney Wildlife Trust, La Société Serquaise, Guille-Allès Library, Sir Charles Frossard House and La Société Guernesiaise Section Room in Candie Gardens have all volunteered to be ‘Bat Centres’ for this season.
 

If you are surveying the same square as last year, you are very welcome to survey the same site as last year but please also consider whether you can survey another area in the square that contains other habitats. We are trying to build up as comprehensive a picture as possible of the bats in the area. You may need the landowner’s permission if you decide to survey somewhere new. To support you with the choice of exactly where to survey in your square, this year we have high-resolution maps that you can download to help you choose a survey site in your square. These can be found in the acceptance email, or in the Manage my Bookings area on the booking website. We are especially interested in any areas of natural or semi-natural habitat (e.g. woodland, wet grassland, scrub, open water etc).
 
As you will be aware, squares are open to be booked by anyone, and so unfortunately, we are not able to guarantee you exactly the same square as last year. If your square is unavailable, please consider selecting another square to survey. 
 

Volunteers are asked to select a square (measuring 500 x 500 metres) from the online sign-up map, and to place a static bat detector in typical habitat in their chosen square for a four-night period twice per year, once between April and mid-July, and again between mid-July and the end of the October. 

The bat detector automatically records bat calls to a memory card every time a bat passes throughout the night. We ask for ideally a minimum of four nights recording, but detector availability will vary depending on a Bat Centre’s opening hours and so 5-6 nights may be possible. At the end of each survey, volunteers are then requested to upload their recordings to our website via the BTO Acoustic Pipeline, and return the detector kit to the Bat Centre. Our automated sound analysis will identify each sound recording to species and send you the initial results within 24 hours. These recordings will be manually verified at the end of the season. The survey season runs from early April until the end of October. 

Without a doubt, the first season of this project revolutionised our understanding about the different types of bat species found on the different islands, and where they are most active.

In the first year alone, the 2021 survey confirmed the presence of 12 bat species, 5 small mammal species, 6 species of bush-crickets, and 2 audible moth species. In terms of bats, these included the first recordings of Serotine for Guernsey, Alderney and Herm, the first Leisler’s Bat, Common Noctule, Lesser Horseshoe Bat and Whiskered or Brandt’s Bat for Guernsey, and potentially the first records of Grey Long-eared Bat for the islands of Herm, Sark, Jethou and Lihou. More generally, the first year of the survey provided a much better understanding of the status of all species of bats across the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and of the relative importance of different habitats.

Find us on Facebook or send us an email - we'd love to hear from you!
Head to our website to find out more about bats and how to protect them.