Hi all,

Thought you might like to know the results from the roost surveys we've been doing over the last month. In all cases the weather was good with clear to patchy skies, temperature ranging from 8c to 15c , calm and no rain , what a change that made and very few midges except on a couple of occasion when they were absolutely diabolical. So what did we have, well:-

Cwm Rheidol pips colony 1st count, 821 bats in all - 819 from the west end and 2 from the side. At the 2nd count there were 435 bats - 419 from the west end and 16 from the side. The difference could be explained in that that weather had been good so the females who should now have babies didn’t bother to emerge because they had feed well on previous evenings; they preferred to play mum.

Two more counts at Cwm Rheidol are planned for the 6th and 14th July – let me know if you can make it please. aes@aber.ac.uk

The long eared roost at Comins Coch produced 20, 1st count and 22, 2nd count, about a third down on usual numbers but we didn’t have the added help of the infra-red camera this year so we might have missed a few. We have been asked to do another count there in August by the house owners just to check all is well so keep your eye out. This might be 13thAug but yet to be confirmed.

Unfortunately the Natterer’s count was very disappointing; no bats emerged on either count. The roost had been about maximum size for this species (92 last year) and it is known that they tend to split up when the roost gets too crowded. However it would be expected that some individuals would have remained, we’ll just have to keep watching.

Hope this is helpful