April is when the bats really start being seen around Wheatland Farm – and we’ve booked another bat survey as part of the Devon Greater Horseshoe Bat project.
Not that we have Greater Horseshoes – we don’t really have the habitat for them, but we do have at least 9 species on the farm, and others are known from nearby. And this is a general survey for bats, even if Greater Horseshoes are the lead act.
Ian picked up the pack from Crediton yesterday, and we put up the microphone on Popehouse Moor SSSI.
Our Easter holiday guests came to lend a hand – and then got stuck in the mud. We had to come back with a spade and excavate the wellie…
The last two bat surveys have been near the big Wheatland Farm wildlife pond.
This time we thought we’d try somewhere slightly different, down near the ‘magic pond’ to be close to woodlands, water and all the insects that live in the culm grassland
The 2018 bat survey was in September, and the one before that was in April 2017. Of course we’re always hoping for more species. But it can take a while for the result to come back, so we’ll have to be patient. More on this later then.