Months and years ..

18 November 2024

A day we’ve worked towards for months, indeed years, came today.

In April, John from Notts Bat Group set up a static detector in the garden and recorded:

• Common pipistrelle
• Soprano pipistrelle
• Brown long-eared
• Daubenton’s
• Noctule
• Natterers
• Leislers?
• Whiskered/Brandts?

.. and possible serotine bat when he monitored the

garden again in September.

We were amazed by this. We’ve worked for a decade opening up our woodland, encouraging native trees to thrive, building up the stock of deadwood throughout the garden as well as creating meadows and ponds. 

All of these measures create food and a nurturing environment for bats but our trees aren’t

sufficiently old with enough fissures to provide lots of roosting and nursery sites for bats. 

We wondered whether our garden is attracting bats from further afield and then wondered how we can provide opportunities for bats to breed in the garden..

To provide more places for roosting and breeding we successfully applied for funding from Severn Trent to provide Schwegler nursery bat boxes for the garden. NBG consider that these boxes are the ones preferred by bats.

Today, members of the NBG joined us and put eighteen bat boxes up onto our trees. We recorded which tree species, height of box, orientation and grid reference for each box. We also relocated two other unused boxes because they were positioned in a tree where branches restricted bats access.

We are entering the quiet time for bats but hope that, when spring comes along and bats become active again, that our boxes will start to be used.

NBG must have enjoyed their lunch because they offered to come back and help monitor the boxes in 2025.

As we sat together, I think we all felt immediately at home with one another, sharing as we did so many things in common including a passion for nature and a determination to make a difference.

Huge thanks to them.

This blog moves to www.sustainablegarden.co.uk soon..