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Bat boxes at Besthorpe

October 19, 2020 in News

Wooden hibernation and Kent bat box.

On Sunday, 18th October, three NBG members installed a total of 26 bat boxes at Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust’s Besthorpe Nature Reserve as part of the new Trent Vale Trail.

The boxes used were primarily those constructed by NBG members and were erected on a mixture of oak and ash trees along the trail. A variety of hibernation, Kent, standard and CJM wooden boxes were used, along with six Ecostyrocrete™ boxes purchased from Greenwood’s Ecohabitats.

Wooden hibernation box and Ecostyrocrete™ box.

All work was carried out by NBG members adhering to current government guidelines.

As blind as a bat?

Not true, in fact bats have quite good eyesight, especially at dusk. Fruit bats have large eyes which gather in a lot of light giving them good night vision to find their food. Microbats, although possessing reasonable eyesight from their much smaller eyes, have a much more efficient method of finding their way in the dark called echolocation. They shout extremely loudly, at frequencies too high for us to hear, and listen for the returning echoes. The echo gives them all the information they need about their surroundings and where their food is. It really is amazing that a bat can locate, whilst flying, a tiny flying insect in total darkness.