Conserving and understanding bats in Northumberland
Text and photos by Mandy and Neil Tomas. We have only been doing bat care for 5 years, but in that time we have been privileged to meet over 300 bats, some more memorable than others. The journey is a vertical learning curve, but we are lucky to have Tina Wiffen and Hazel Makepeace guiding … Read more
Positive results for re-uniting baby bats with their mothers. Stepladder, tea towel and hot water bottle required.
It is 2020, a functioning website is a powerful tool! The Northumberland Bat Group (NBG) website has had an interesting history and a few iterations. When I fist joined the group in 2006 the website was hosted by the brother of a group member. He’d done a lot of work on it, it was all … Read more
Leazes Park Bat Walk – 6th August 202 This bat walk was the first of a series being run on behalf of Northumberland Bat Group (NBG) in and around the area. Seven people were due to attend, but since we are all aware of the covid risks, two cancelled just in case their “feeling under … Read more
Tina has written a summary blog for the last of the NBMP hibernation surveys of 2020.
Text and photos by Hazel Makepeace – workshop held on 30th January 2020 in the NHSN Council Room. Who thought looking at bat poo could be so much fun! As a follow on to the ‘Who’s Poo is That?’ workshop and after attending a kick sampling event in the River Coquet, where larvae and nymphs … Read more
Written by Tina Wiffen; Photo credits: Emily Marin, Tina Wiffen This month we managed to survey all the sites on one day with volunteers from Northumberland, Cumberland and Durham bat groups, it’s good to work with members of different groups and share skills and biscuits.This season has been great for finding bats. We recorded 12 … Read more
Text by: Tina Wiffen; Photo credits: Helen McDonald, Will Walton and Tina Wiffen The surveys took place over two days to ensure all the sites were covered at least once. I think the first day was the windiest day I have ever been up there trying to get to the top adit! The first survey … Read more
Over the last few months, the old NBG website has been having a few problems, most of which have been caused by the website host – Moonfruit. They use flash player to run their hosted websites, but unfortunately flash is not really widely used by anyone else. Even Google are going to cease to support … Read more
As a member of Northumberland Bat Group, I thought I would write a short blog about the work that I have been doing abroad, regarding bats. I learned my core skills as a member of NBG, so it is great that I can now work abroad, with “in country specialists” and undertake bat work with … Read more