BatChat

S3E31 This week Steve is on the Tortworth Estate in south Gloucestershire with Jim Mullholland. They're joined by a voluntary team of arborists who are assisting Jim with his 5 year project to create natural tree features for Bechstein's and barbastelle bats. By using chainsaws to create different crevices and cavities within living trees, the team hope that they will be taken up by colo...

S3E30 This week Steve is in Surrey at RHS Garden Wisley with Principal Entomologist Dr Andrew Salisbury. Andrew sits down with Steve in the brand new wildlife garden outside their new laboratory building to tell us about the work the RHS do and how we can improve our gardens for wildlife including bats.  This week we also have a piece of nature writing by James Gilbert. James creates 'thumbna...

S3E29 This week Steve joins Martyn Cooke outside a holiday cottage in Staffordshire as they set up a matrix of bat detectors to record the sound of Brandt's bats emerging from their roost before flying into the adjacent woodland. Martyn explains why he is recording the calls, why he's travelled all the way from Surrey to record these bats and what the calls will be used for. Steve finds...

S3E28 This week Steve is joined in a Derbyshire churchyard by Jon Russ who is an expert on bat echolocation calls. They discuss how Jon got into studying bat calls, his latest book on the subject and his passion for Nathusius’ pipistrelle bats. Jon's latest book " Bat Calls of Britain and Europe " is available from Pelagic Publishing and is aimed at anyone interested in bat echoloca...

S3E27 This week Steve is in the Lake District National Park with Ecologist and Chair of south Cumbria Bat Group Rich Flight. Rich published the findings of a study called "Bats with Altitude" in the journal British Island Bats in 2021 and he sits down with Steve to tell us about what inspired the project, what bats were found at over 500m on the mountainsides and how volunteers surveyed...

S3E26 This week Steve is at Chorlton Water Park Nature Reserve in Manchester with author and illustrator Emma Reynolds. Emma's debut author-illustrator book "Amara and the Bats" was published here in the UK in July 2021 and she sits down with Steve to tell us how the book has been received, what she thinks the future of children's books holds and what it was that inspired her t...

S3E25 This week Steve is on the Norfolk coastline in the East of England visiting Jane Harris from the Norfolk barbastelle study group. Paston Great Barn dates back to 1581. It’s a huge thatched barn made of flint, brick and stone measuring 50 meters in length and about 10 meters wide. Despite it’s size, driving south along the coast road it’s very easy to miss as you pass its end flint wall and n...

S3E24 BatChat is back for a third series! Steve is on the roof of the biological sciences building with Professor Gareth Jones where he talks to Steve about just some of the research he has undertaken in his lifetime with bats. They discuss the work famously done to separate the two pipistrelle species back in the 90's, what Gareth gets up to in his spare time and the unusual behaviour found...

Hello everyone it’s Steve here from BatChat here to tell you that a brand new series is going to be along on Wednesday. I know it’s been a long wait since the last series but we’ve been working really hard to join our guests out in the field so that you don’t have to listen to any more Zoom calls! So all of our guests this series have been recorded on location. This is just a little teaser, to giv...

S2E23 For the final episode of Series 2 we join Nottinghamshire Bat Group member Barry Collins at a Leicestershire Church where he talks to Steve about the works that were undertaken on the church to restore it whilst retaining the Natterer's bat colony living in the fabric of the building. Barry also discusses the importance of churches in the local community as well as how they're adap...

S2E22 The 2020 Woodland Symposium was hosted by BCT, six years after the inaugural symposium. It bought together landowners, ecologists, bat workers and professionals from the woodland and forestry industry to listen to talks from 15 speakers covering research, knowledge updates and case studies on woodlands and bats. We hear from three of those speakers as well as a couple of the 11 students who...

S2E21 Chester Zoo is the most visited zoo in the UK with over 2 million visitors a year. It's also a conservation and education charity committed to preventing extinction. The fruit bat forest in the Twilight Zone exhibition is a fantastic visitor experience; Steve joins Dave White, the manager of the Twilight Zone, who explains how it's also used as an insurance population for the endan...

S2E20 Steve joins Helen Ball and other members of Staffordshire Bat Group as they undertake a winter hibernation survey for the National Bat Monitoring Programme (NBMP). Recorded in February 2020 in the Staffordshire Peak District, they undertake the latest survey of disused lead mines searching for bats deep in torpor. Helen reveals what it's like to undertake the survey (it's a VERY st...

S2E19 The Bat Conservation Trust is a small conservation charity but undertakes a vast amount of work in their aim to conserve bats. During the runup to Christmas, Steve spoke with their Chief Executive Officer, Kit Stoner, to find out what it's like to run a small but busy charity, the current challenges and whether she manages to get out and do bat work in her spare time after work!  Follow...

S2E18 In November 2019 before the word Coronavirus had become all-too familiar, the Scottish Bat Conference was taking place in Perth. In this episode Steve speaks to Liz Ferrell BCT's Scottish bat officer, Sue Swift who published the authoritative work on long-eared bats and Tracey Jolliffe who has an interest in zoonotic diseases and discusses bats and rabies.  Book your place at the 2021 S...

S2E17 The weather has certainly got chilly in the last few days, but back in late October, it was still mild and Steve visited a bat colony which was still in residence in its summer roost. He meets up with Helen Parr, community engagement officer for the Devon Greater Horseshoe Bat Project. They discuss how the project has been received by the community over the last five years and what achieveme...

S2E16 Winifred is the Chief Scientist at Bat Conservation International as well as an associate research professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In this episode, Steve finds out about the discovery Winifred made about the ecology of Pallid bats whilst undertaking her PhD out in the deserts and chats to her about her work as a key scientist in the...

S2E13 Remember seeing bats over your garden years ago and suddenly realised that they've vanished over time? Wildlife garden landscaper Joel Ashton reveals how you can help attract bats to your greenspace by greening up a fence and planting certain species to increase insect diversity which in turn will provide your local bats with a buffet! At the Bat Conservation Trust we have a vision of a...

S2E14 A camping trip in the New Forest was the first sighting of bats that broadcaster, naturalist and writer Chris Packham had. He became the president of the Bat Conservation Trust in 2006 and in this episode recorded during the 2020 lockdown, Steve Roe asks Chris what it was about the Trust that made him want to become President. Chris tells us about the time he had serotine bats flying around...

S1E13 In this bonus episode recorded during the UK lockdown, we have two guests on the show. Tom August is a scientist based at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and Lisa Worledge is Head of Conservation Services at the Bat Conservation Trust. They talk to Steve about the interest that bats are currently getting in the press around the origins of the current COVID-19 pandemic, what bats can...

S1E12 This week we have two guests on the show. Hannah Van Hesteren is one of the Helpline Managers at the Bat Conservation Trust. She talks to Steve about the vital work the Helpline does each summer when it takes hundreds of calls each day from members of the public who have found an injured or grounded bat. Gail Armstrong was the recipient of the Pete Guest Award in 2019 for her outstanding pra...

S1E11 Despite a number of our bats using trees as roost sites, we know surprisingly little about how bats use trees. In this episode Steve sits down with veteran tree expert Jim Mullholland from the Arboricultural Association and discusses what we still don't know about the ecology of bats and trees. Jim also touches on a project he's been working on recently using trail cameras as a sur...

S1E10 The British Isles have a large number of islands around its coasts and some of these have bat groups. In this episode Steve discusses the challenges of being an isolated voluntary group with Carol Williams who is  the secretary of the Isles of Scilly Bat Group and with Ani Binet who until recently was a resident on Jersey in the Channel Islands and an active member of the Jersey Bat Group ....

S1E9 Steve heads to the Churnet valley in north Staffordshire to join Staffordshire Bat Group members Helen Ball and David Nixon for the day. Helen explains how a colony of Brandt's bats in one of their bat box schemes (started by the Vincent Wildlife Trust) have become one of the main study subjects in their small Myotis bat project which is taking place across the Churnet valley. In the eve...

S1E8 James has been involved in bat conservation since 2010 and has been involved in a variety of projects in that time including setting up Gib-Bats (the Gibraltar Bats Project) in 2013. In 2016 he was awarded the Bat Conservation Trust's Pete Guest Award for making an outstanding practical contribution to bat conservation. In this episode Steve joins James at a bat box check event just outs...