Weekly Six – 23rd – 29th April 2007

Greetings and welcome to this weeks offerings! Before we start I thought I should provide a third and final note about our bird situation: our injured Starling appears to have made a full recovery. We last saw him greatly improved and feeding well however I believe that he has now lost all signs of the original injury and is therefore is indistinguishable from the other starlings in our garden!

All of our resident starlings appear to be doing well though and there are the noisy sounds of starling chicks emanating from our neighbour but ones eaves, as is usual for this time of year, and it won’t be long before 'family starling' grace our garden with their young every morning for a feed and bath.

This weeks’ weekly six in inspired by Bats. I attended a course on Friday which qualifies me to undertake stage 1 surveys of trees for bats. That basically means I can inspect a tree from the ground, for any signs or symptoms of bats or bat roosts, and determine the potential for bats/ bat roosts as one of three categories: High, Unknown, None. Trees identified as high or unknown categories require further investigation by a licensed inspector.

It was a fascinating course which will greatly assist me in my job and I thought I would share a few of the facts I leant via the weekly six.

If you would like to find out more please follow
this link to the Bat Conservation Trusts’ website.

Fact 1:

There are 16 species of bat native to the United Kingdom and they all rely on trees for either roost sites or food sources.

Fact 2:

The most common bat species in the UK are the Pipistrelle spp. You can fit 100 Pipistrelle bats into a 1 pint milk bottle (calculated via mathematical formula not empirical research!)

Fact 3:

Contrary to common belief bats are not blind; they actually have very good eyesight

Fact 4:


All bats and bat roosts are protected by law. Disturbance of a bat or bat roost carries a fine of £5000 per bat and could incur a 6 month prison sentence.

Fact 5:


Bats in the UK can live for up to 40 years, and make up 30% of Britain’s mammal population.

Fact 6:

Bats are protected due to their serious decline in recent years, attributed predominantly to a loss of their habitat.

Please take the time to visit the
BCT Website. There are also county bat groups throughout the country. I am planning to join my local group and hopefully get involved in some bat surveys. I think it will be another great way to get out and about and enjoy our beautiful countryside.

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