This Big Bat Survey was organised by the Somerset Bat Group with help from SERC, to systematically collect Bat data across the Somerset Levels.
The survey was enabled by the enthusiasm and expertise of group volunteers devoting their time to walk transects, mapping and describing the results and spending hours analysing the sound recordings.
The results are below:
- Brue Valley 2017 Big Bat Survey Report – Announcement & thanks
- Brue Valley 2016 Big Bat Survey Report
- Brue Valley 2015 Big Bat Survey Report
- Brue Valley 2014 Big Bat Survey Report
- Brue Valley 2013 Big Bat Survey Report
The first Brue Valley Big Bat Survey took place in 2013 and the project ran for four years across the Levels until 2017. The survey assessed bat activity over specified transect routes with predefined stops and walk sections. Seventeen routes were defined in 2013 but only a selection of these have been surveyed each year:
- fifteen transects in 2013
- nine transects in 2014
- eleven transects in 2015
- ten in 2016
The reasons for this are partly to ensure a minimum of three surveyors per team and partly to increase coverage of the survey area.
This has given an opportunity to build on the findings of the previous surveys and provide more data of a kind that could not be recorded in any other way.