Bat Watching

We had a fabulous evening on May bank holiday watching bats in the churchyard. It was a warm evening with starry skies and a full moon - perfect for bats. Mariko from the Dorset Wildlife Trust ran the event and a large contingent from the Dorset Bat Group joined us with their high tech equipment and great depth of knowledge in all things 'batty'.

We had a great turnout with 25 of us focused on the church to hunt for emerging bats. Mariko h

ad brought along many hand held bat monitors to borrow, and gave a very informative talk and mini training session at the start.

The Dorset Bat Group set up their equipment inside and outside the church and showed us all how it worked. They also had a hunt around inside the church for signs of bats such as their droppings.

During the evening we saw a good number of bats from four species: pipistrelle, serotine, noctule and Natterer's. They were roosting on the church and flying around inside and out. Hopefully in the future we will see some move into our newly-made bat boxes. To find out more on bats please go to www.dorsetbatgroup.org.