Batty news, events and more

Hi all,

I hope you are all well and enjoying some batty events this month. More on that to follow.

First of all, the great news is Limerick City and County Council have awarded Limerick Bat Group with a grant to get a proper static bat detector for our Lesser Horseshoe Bat pilot enhancement project in Hospital, County Limerick which we will work on with Hospital Tidy Towns and anyone else who wants to join in. This is fantastic news as it means that when we identify potential pathways for enhancement around Hospital, we can survey them thoroughly to see if bats are actually using them, focusing our work to relevant areas. This will mean training for anyone interested in understanding how static detectors work and training in bat identification and using bat ID software. This is a specialised task and takes time to learn so I would love if a few people tried the training and then decided if they had a knack for it and could give it a go. Of course if anyone who is already experienced with bat ID in the group wants to volunteer on this one, brilliant! We have a few more elements to this project aswell, including habitat mapping using QGIS which we will also run a workshop on (you'd need to bring your own laptop for this) and I would also love to figure out how to map the lighting in the area too which is apparently doable with a car and a webcam. This element needs more research. Please reply to this email if you are interested in any of the above workshops/training so that I can get an idea of numbers and whats needed. I want to put workshops on at a time and location suitable for group members. I'll add further details on what you can do with QGIS to the website for those interested, at a later date. Its going to be easy enough for anyone who is used to using computers and would like to learn how to make fancy looking maps. :)

Limerick Bat Group are co-hosting two upcoming events with Living Limerick in the next few weeks. The first is a daytime Bird, Bee, Butterfly, Bat & Bug Safari walk on the 15th of August. Meeting spot is at UL Boathouse at 1 O'Clock.

The second event is the bat walk in Curraghchase on the 20th with Kate from the Vincent Wildlife Trust. Bound to be a great event. Email Living Limerick on livinglimerick@antaisce.org for further info on both or if you would like to sign up for the second event. Follow Living Limerick on Facebook for more great events.

For those of you who placed an order with me for the bat droppings ID guide, it has arrived! and it is beautiful. :D See below and i'll add more photos to the website when I get the chance. For those of you jealous of this glorious dropping guide, you can purchase your own copy from the Bat Conservation Trust website. I couldn't find it on the website so emailed them and they had no problem sending it on.

Lastly, I may have told some of you that I was hoping to get an IR night time video camera system up and running for the group but I have been running into bad luck and have decided to call it a day for a while until I have more time and cash to focus on it. I was purchasing these items out of my own funds and the video camera as well as IR light I bought both were malfunctioning. They have both now been returned but I have learnt a lot about how to set up a decent but reasonably priced IR system. Let me know if you would like to source your own and I'd be happy to pass on what I have learnt.

Thats all folks, I'm off to bed. I'll be doing my final car based bat survey this weekend (weather permitting) and will submit the Batlas Data from the survey that I recently completed with bat group members this year. I know some have surveys on-going also, how is everyone getting on? Anyone need any support or are you all doing ok? Thanks to those who helped out with mine and I hope you learnt something.

Sorry by the way for the long blog, I'm sure you are used to it by now and if not, welcome to the group. :)

Tanya