National Bat Conference 2018 (1/2)

Early September, the National Bat Conference was held at the University of Nottingham. Days previous to the event we organised a competition offering free tickets for the winners. Our young winner Linus (13) narrate his experience during the event in this report:

We arrived through the university campus to the location of the conference: a very posh building and signed in, collected our name badges, and we were off!

There were stands; stalls with loads of info and coffee, water and some tasty biscuits! All the people there were very helpful and would inform us on anything we needed to know- as we didn’t know where or when our bat handling workshop started!

We met other Notts Batts group members and chatted at the coffee for bat carers break, and then it was time for the bat handling for beginners’ workshop! The people running it were, again, very informative and friendly, and after a quick slide show they taught us how to handle the bats and stop them from moving, and also supplied protective gloves.

We handled Leislers, Noctules and pipistrelles. We even had a couple runaway bats! ( they soon flew down as bats in captivity usually can’t fly very well)But the instructors taught us how to stop the bats from moving, by cradling and resting your thumb on their neck. They felt safe and didn’t move as soon as we did this. After a great workshop, we headed on over to the atrium for some lunch, there were many options to choose from, and dessert and coffee or hot chocolate was also served! Soon after, we went and listened to the talks on Romanian cave-dwelling bats and horseshoe bats in wales, the Romanian one being especially interesting as we’d been there! We are also planning to head down to Devon at some point ( as my cousins and Granny live down there anyway) to see the greater horseshoe bats.

I learnt a ton and especially enjoyed the bat handling workshop, as it made me a lot more confident handling bats. Thank you very much to Notts Bat Group for giving me a chance to go, and I’m sure others that go will enjoy it as much as I did.