Bat Surveys Again
So this van is getting on my nerves… the one that got the flat last time. So this is now my new work vehicle and to be fair I am not loving the electric van. Bit disappointing also that I got given this car out of the pool of cars as I actually live the furthest away from the Office. The max mileage this van can do (and max btw so it doesn't actually do this!) is 120 miles but I live 72 miles away from the Office one way.. so yeh bit of a nightmare to be honest.
But I try to stay positive and at least the one job we are working on is in Kent so that is not as bad. However, whilst charging the silly thing it decides not to turn back on again… Super frustrating as I was on my way to find bats. I was doing the daytime checks looking for the bat roost locations and I had a good idea of where they would be but now I am stuck instead in a Morrisons car park waiting for the RAC to come get me. Thank goodness I got the cover once I got the van, especially after the tyre on the first day I was not going to risk it! Good job I had a some fantastic snacks with me and had my oxtail massamam curry so that kept my happy whilst I waited. Also got on with some MBA homework.. more on that another time.
Despite the hiccup with the silly van, it has been good fun doing bat work in the UK again as it had been a little while since I worked with UK bats. Of course the work we are doing is for bigger development projects so I cannot say too much but we are capturing bats in flight then radio tagging them to understand their movements across the landscape and the sites as well as finding their roosting sites. This information helps inform the development projects and safeguards areas of higher importance to bats or at least ensures losses are mitigated for. Exciting as we are working with some cool radio tracking gear, the Track IT mast systems, which enable us to get real time data of the bats in flight via a grid network of masts across the site. This saves a lot of man hours driving around at night chasing the bats for the data.
