Wildlife Circus

This Autumn we emptied about 30 bat boxes on Tooting Common. These were situated mainly on the great two-hundred year old oak trees, but also on the occasional ash and clumps of willow trees. Every single one had been used by an animal or bird. Mostly blue and great tits had used the boxes for bringing up their broods, but wrens had used them as night roosts (quite recently according to fresh droppings). Wood mice had entered a few (near the lake) and we suspect a pygmy shrew in the one below, where there was a clearly defined small exit hole, near the pink area in the photo.   In some cases birds will nest in the box bottom and bats can hang in the top, benefiting from the warmth of the birds. In all cases, spiders had used the boxes for breeding and we found centipedes, large numbers of two species of slug, woodlice and earwigs. Althouh we didn't find any bats but with the range of species recorded- it is more than likely- that bats  spend many nights within these ...

checking the bat box from the ground Kent design bat box showing fur staining  After a training session for prospective bat roost visitors at Richmond Park, 28.3.15, members of the London Bat Group went to the Roebuck Inn to toast the launch of the London Bat Atlas. It was initiated during 2010 with seed funding from the Vodafone ‘World of a Difference’ fund, which helped employ the services of Richard Law, to gather together the existing data holdings, as well as investigate the type of document and layout we wanted. It took longer to accomplish than we originally thought, but with the help of Greenspace information for Greater London, our group has produced a document, which is as accurate as possible, but easy to access the information. It is an example of the importance of submitting biological records, especially in this time of ‘blink and you miss it’ demolition and re-development. As always it exemplifies those boroughs where there are active bat group membe...