Sunday 10th October 2010 - Shenstone

Due to other commitments, I was unable to get around the patch in the day time today but I did manage to get down to Captain's Pool at dusk with my new toy, a bat detector. A number of bats were over the water but I was able to identify two particular species. The majority were Soprano Pipistrelles and there was also a Daubenton's bat present.

This was quite an interesting find as I kind of expected Daubenton's (or the 'water bat' as its commonly known) but I thought the Pipistrelles would have been Common Pipistrelles. But reading up on it I have discovered that the equally common Soprano Pipestrelle tends to favour hunting over pools and rivers. It gets its name from the higher frequency that it echo locates at, hence the reason you can differentiate the two species with the bat detector. Soprano Pipistrelle was only split from Common Pipistrelle as a separate species in the 1990s .

You can download factsheets on these species from the Bat Conservation Trust at the following link:

http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/uk_bat_species.html

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2 comments:

  1. midlands birder10 October 2010 at 13:10

    hey jase
    just in case you wanted to know, the Emporor goose that was at captains pool was refound on my patch at lickhill on the other side of stourport this AM, no rings on its legs :D, hope it sticks around, pretty bird that
    MB

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jason K10 October 2010 at 13:23

    Hi Craig,

    Thanks for the info. Thats really interesting, I wondered where it disappeared to. Its a smart looking bird.

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