The Lyons Share

I spent a very wet morning introducing Philip Briggs from the Bat Conservation Trust and Micklemus Blackman to a couple of transects they will be walking at The Mens looking at bats. Much of the work will be done by recording the bats vocalisations and identifying them later on play back. The focus of the study will be the rare Barbastelle Bat but all bats will be looked at in detail where possible. They will be doing similar work at Ebernoe Common where I am hoping to get out on one of the surveys. It's important to walk the route in advance as there is a very good chance of getting lost in these woods at night!

I changed the interception traps today as well and noticed that this recent wet spell has sent up quite a lot of fungal fruiting bodies including the first Garlic Parachute I have seen this year (they really do stink of garlic!) as well as Chicken-of-the-Woods, Dryad's Saddle and Green Elf Cup fungus. There are only two weeks left on the deadwood invert survey at The Mens, we should be taking the traps down in a fortnight.

It's good to be helping set up one project as another one comes to an end. I have about six weeks left of my survey season when it will all come to a close again for another year and I might just think about taking a fortnight off!