We’ve had some more good results from our joint monitoring project with the Moors for the Future Partnership (MFFP). The Anabat Express detector was placed near Bradwell Edge for the latest round of monitoring in the northern uplands of the county. Four species were recorded, common and soprano pipistrelles, noctule and a Daubenton’s bat.
It is unusual to be able to confidently identify the Myotis bats to species level based on frequency division recordings alone. However, at 04:06 on 19th July a Myotis echolocation call also containing the distinctive social calls of a Daubenton’s bat was noted. Other Myotis calls recorded during the survey may have also been this species or one or more of the other three known to occur in Derbyshire and the Peak District.
The 1 km grid square in which the detector was located wasn’t an entirely blank square without any previous records. Our database shows that pipistrelle bats were seen nearby in 1991. This however predated the discovery, in the mid-1990s, of the soprano pipistrelle as a separate species; we now know, thanks to this latest survey, that both species occur there!
News of our project has featured in several publications recently. I wrote an article for the autumn/winter 2020 issue of BCT’s Bat News, while in April 2021 articles by local journalist Andrew Griffiths, who interviewed me and Tom Spencer from MFFP, appeared in the BBC Wildlife magazine and in Derbyshire Life.
Alan Roe
Derbyshire Bat Group Recorder
