BARCOMBE BAT PROJECT
The Barcombe Bat Monitoring Project.
Lou Alexander – Parish Councillor
Anne Livesey – Ecology and Nature subgroup
Rachel Bennington – Ecology and Nature subgroup
Beginnings
We applied for funding of about £800 from the Community Pitch fund in order to buy some bat detecting equipment to survey the local bat population. We felt we have good knowledge about other species such as birds, butterflies and amphibians but nothing really on bats.
With guidance, we purchased 2 Echo Meter Touch 2 detectors. These have the capacity to identify the bat you are listening to, reasonably accurately, in the similar way to the way that Merlin identifies birds.
We also bought 3 Magenta bat detectors. These work well in conjunction with the Echos as once you have identified the bat you are able to then adjust the frequency on the Magenta and hear the bat on this device too.
Once we had the kit we arranged a community meeting. Jessie Rodriguez, the OVCA ranger, agreed to lead the meeting and a bat walk afterwards. This was advertised through a community Facebook page and by a banner at the centre of the village. This was a very successful meeting and approximately 20 people came and signed up to monitor the bats with us.
We looked at the people that had come to the meeting and where they lived and then divided the village and the outlying areas into blocks that people could be responsible for. 12 people agreed to take on a block (and later to take on other areas).
Over August, Lou Alexander coordinated the bat kit going out to the various people and we were very pleased with the results. In all during this period we made over 1200 recordings of bats in the local area. The most abundant species were the Soprano Pipistrelle and the Common Pipistrelle, closely followed by the Noctule bat.
However, one of our volunteers, is the owner of Knowland’s Wood in Spithurst. This is a wood that has been very carefully managed with wildlife in mind for decades. Not surprisingly, several quite rare bats were identified by the kit including Grey Long Eared bats, Bechstein’s bat and Barbastelles. In fact, Grey Long Eared bats have been identified in quite a few areas of the parish. These need to be verified by someone with greater knowledge than us and with this in mind, we contacted Jessica Lewis at the Sussex Bat Group.
Jessica agreed to come to the village and talk at another bat meeting we had arranged. This time we got a similar number of people – although many of them were new this time.
Since this meeting at the end of August, we have continued to monitor the bats. We have asked people to redo the areas that they have done before – really to confirm that the bats are there on 2 occasions rather than just the once. Bat monitoring was completed at the end of September.
In September, with the National Bat Monitoring programme in mind, rather than just sending people out to a general area, we asked them to identify 6-8 points on their walk and then use What3words to pinpoint their location. This means that the surveys can be done again more accurately next year. People have been really good at doing this and as a result we have data that tells us really clearly where bats are and in what numbers.
One of our group is a computer programmer. His plan is to use the data about location and Google Maps to create a tool that allows anyone to go in and see if there are bats near their house. We hope to unveil this at an Eco fair that we hope to run in March 2026.
In July, Lou Alexander also made contact with the local school and arranged for us to go in and deliver an assembly. This was led by Rachel Bennington whose area of specialty is wildlife and climate education. In July we also contacted Jessie Rodriguez to see if she would lead a children’s bat walk in September once it got dark a lot earlier. This was well attended and lots of enthusiastic children came along.
Summary
Overall, we feel that this has been a very successful community project. It has engaged a large number of people who live in the village and has provided a great deal of useful data that we can pass onto agencies that can use the information. We hope to repeat the data gathering process next year to see if bat numbers remain stable or have lessened/got greater.
Going forward
We are currently verifying the recordings of rarer bats with the support of the Sussex Bat Group. This group have also said that they would like to set up monitoring boxes inn Knowlands Wood to track and monitor the rarer bats.