Past Projects

Echolocation location

This project set out to map the 12 species of Nottinghamshire bats on tetrads (4km squares) covering all of Nottinghamshire. 97% of the tetrads were sampled. Data was gathered from Bat Box checks, harp trapping projects such as the National Nathusius Pipistrelle Project and Barbastelle Project, Static detector deployment, driven and walked transects. Records also showed the age of each species data. This was a multi year project funded by a Heritage Lottery fund with the The Bats of Nottinghamshire Book being published on Saturday 3rd November 2018.

It’s an A5 book with 112 pages with full colour maps and photographs.

Barbastelle Project

This project was designed to find and offer protection to Barbastelle roosts, especially maternity roosts. This species is very rare in Nottinghamshire, though now with recent records we can see they are moving northward into the county.

The project selected woods where Barbastelle's had been detected. With landowners permission we then trapped bats using harp traps and mist nets. When females were caught they had a tiny radio tracking device attached and were actively radio tracked back to the roosts in the hope of finding maternity roosts. This was sucessful at two sites and featured on the BBC Countryfile in 2018.

Barbastelle bat

Miner2Major

This was a large project celebrating the diverse wildlife, important habitats and rich heritage of Sherwood Forest. Our part focussed on the bats in Sherwood as part of a National Heritage Lottery Funded project called Miner2Major as in coal miner to Major Oak. Miner2Major was a five-year Landscape Partnership Scheme (2019-2023) which aimed to promote and safeguard the natural, built and cultural heritage at the historic core of Sherwood Forest, engaging local communities through a variety of people-focused projects.

NBG’s role in this project was to to carry out surveys, primarily using static detectors, to determine the presence of some of our rarer bat species, Barbastelle, Leisler’s and Serotine bats within the Sherwood forest area. The information gathered from these surveys informed conservation actions to supporting the species such as erecting bat boxes, and habitat management. In addition, we engaged with members of the public by providing walks and talks organised to educate locals on bats.

Deploying a static detector at Blidworth Woods.

As part of the project we booked a days training from Neil Middleton of BatAbility on call analysis and the use of Anabat Insight. Later in the project NBG also provided zoom training sessions on call analysis so newer members could participate in the project.

Training day with Neil Middleton

A Brown Long Eared type C social / location call

The project provided us with some additional equipment including static Anabat Swift detectors, which we were deploying across several woodlands throughout Sherwood. Although COVID stalled some of our planned walks and talks and delayed our first year of data collection we did managed to deploy statics across four woodlands towards the latter half of summer 2020 and eight during 2021. We had a stall at the RSPB Sherwood open days in September with evening bat walks there and at Vicar Water.

Bat walk at Vicar Water

Bat Box project

In 2018 NBG decided to begin a programme of bat box building to create a number of new schemes across the county to explore which species are roosting within our woodlands. This goes hand in hand with our other key project – Miner2Major which is also focused on finding out what bat species we have in woodlands with a focus on Sherwood Forest.

We looked at various designs of bat boxes and their construction and decided to make a mix of Kent, Standard, CJM and hibernation boxes in the hope that providing a mix of box types would maximise the chances of creating conditions the bats require and increase species diversity in our schemes..

As well as checking for bat occupancy, as part of the monitoring for each box installed, we record its, box height above the ground, box aspect, along with tree species and the canopy cover with the hope that after a few years of data collection we can start to build a picture of bats preferences.

We have installed new bat box schemes at Martin’s Pond, Stoney Plantation, Bramcote Hills Park, Bramcote Ridge, Foxcovert Plantation, Besthorpe Nature Reserve, Collingham, Watnall Spinney, Fansfield Millenium Wood, Moor Pond Woods, Cotgrave Country Park, Radcliffe on Trent cliff walk, St Peter's School Ruddington, The Grove Burton Joyce, Portland Park Kirkby in Ashfield, Newstead and Annesly Country Park, Colwick Woods, Waxwings and East Bridgford and Screveton Church Yards.

Kent, standard, CJM and hibernation bat boxes.

National Nathusius pipistrelle project

Nottinghamshire Bat Group assisted with the National Nathusius’s Pipistrelle Project from 2014 to 2023.

Nathusius’ pipistrelle is considered rare in the UK but may simply be under-recorded. It is often found at large waterbodies, particularly during its autumn migration period.

The National Nathusius’ Pipistrelle Project was launched in 2014 with a grant from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, to improve our understanding of the ecology, current status and conservation threats for Nathusius’ pipistrelles in Great Britain.

The aims of the project are to:

Determine the resident and breeding status of Nathusius’ pipistrelle in Great Britain.
Determine the migratory origins of Nathusius’ pipistrelles in Great Britain.

Click here to listen to a podcast about this project.

Nathusius’ pipistrelle

The following thermal video shows a Nathusius pipistrelle caught in a harp trap during this project. Top to bottom there are strands of fishing line strung in 3 banks. The bats fly in and then drop to the bottom to be caught in the bag. Bats are unharmed by this as the fishing line is tensioned to give a cushoning effect. You can see 2 bats fall down into the bag. The last of which tries to fly up and out but fails. White is hot.

The Big Notts Bat Watch 2020 Results

During June the bat group ran a citizen science project for people to get involved with during COVID lockdown. We asked them to record all the bats they saw flying in their garden or local green space in ten minute periods for up to an hour. 128 sites were recorded in or very close to Nottinghamshire. All but three entries recorded bats!