The Bats of Nottinghamshire Book Launch

So nice this time of year with all the changing leaves of autumn around! Been a busy few weeks as Nottinghamshire Bat Group have been getting ready to launch the Bats of Nottinghamshire Book which is a wrap to our HLF Echolocation Location Project! We have been reviewing the final edit and promoting the launch night.

Michael (former Chair of NBG and current recorder) has done an immense amount of work on the project and the final version of the book looks awesome! The book is an up to date account of all the species recorded in Nottinghamshire, an A5 book with 112 pages with full colour maps and photographs. Seeing all the updated and revised maps is great and incredible how much data the Group members have collected over the years through bat walks, driven transects, harp trapping / mist netting and radio tracking!

The project was a three year mission to fill in the blanks across the country for bat records and increase our knowledge of bats in the County. During the project we also managed to discover barbastelles in the country and even radio tracked them to find our first roost and first maternity roost which is super cool! I love radio tracking and so getting to be part of the Nottinghamshire Barbastelle Project has been really fun. Couple of weeks ago we had a Nathusius pipistrelle with a ring turn up in one of the bat boxes at one of our schemes! Sadly though the endoscope couldn’t give us a clear enough image to read the ring number and it is in a Kent box!

To launch the book we had a celebration event at at Oscar and Rosies on Stoney Street in Hockley. The event had a bat themed halloween quiz and raffle as well as lots and lots of free pizza! Though I may have taken the music theme too far… It was none the less a fun filled evening! Make sure you pick up you free copy if you are a Notts Bat Group member otherwise you can buy one from our website at https://www.nottsbatgroup.org.uk/the-bats-of-nottinghamshire/