While I rarely see bats when we had a village walk around with a bat expert using detectors, at the right time of dusk with little wind the place was seething with their calls. Still quite difficult to see as they are just a fleeting glimpse of a black spec in the tree tops.

On 27 August 2024 at 13:31 pgk pgk Said:

My shed is fully ply lined and uPVC doors and windows

I picked up a rag to wipe hands after working on a mower to find something odd underneath. It wasn’t until it breathed I realised it was a sleeping pipistrelle. Rather than go get camera etc I just covered him/her up again.  I’ll leave doors open at dusk and help it out then with a suitable pole on standby

On a warm evening, please.

I built a bat box as one of my COVID lockdown projects. It is now on the end of the workshop, about 4m from the ground. I have no idea if it is occupied but there have been Pipistrelles very local to me for many years.

JA

On 27 August 2024 at 17:59 Nigel Graham 2 Said:

Pgk Pgk –

I don’t know what country you live in, but if in the UK…

Be Very Careful!

Please do verify this with Natural England (an amateur bat-group may be prone to “gold-plating”) but I am pretty sure it is ILLEGAL even to photograph a bat, let alone handle one, without a special licence.

…

Michael –

Unlikely the inverters would upset bats unless they (the inverters) emit a sound somewhere within the bats’ hearing range, so possibly confusing them.

Although such a sound is likely to be of low level at source, and the higher its frequency the shorter its range as increasing absorption adds to the inverse-square distance attenuation.

More likely your local bats have been driven away by the new housing-estates removing the insect habitats and roost sites on which the animals rely. I have seen them hawking around some blocks of flats near me, presumably having learnt the cluster of street and house lights attracts lots of nice juicy moths.

I suspect that my mum wouldn’t care if it was illegal to handle one when she was screaming at my dad to get one out of her hair that had come in through an open window. A long time ago now so I don’t recall what happened to the bat.

And as for photos I carry this in my wallet

You have the right to keep any photographs you take unless confiscated via a warrant. You do not need permission from your subject to take their photograph. You own the copyright to any photographs you take, not the subject. You cannot be removed or restricted from taking photographs from a public place.