The Bailiwick Bat Survey

Visualise your bat recordings (https://www.alderneywildlife.org/current-projects/bailiwick-bat-survey/visualise)

The Bailiwick Bat Survey (BBS) is a four-year project where anyone can borrow a passive acoustic monitoring bat detector to find out what's around them at night. It is the most extensive bat survey carried out in the Bailiwick of Guernsey and is helping us to understand the distribution of bats, small mammals and bush-crickets across the Bailiwick.

Bats are an important but poorly understood component of the Bailiwick of Guernsey’s fauna, despite making up the majority of the terrestrial mammal species.

Citizen scientists taking part in the project have helped detect the first ever records of Common Noctule and Serotine, and increased Alderney's species count for bats to 13, as well as helping to understand the habitats that different species use

The project started in 2021 and was led by The States of Guernsey’s Agriculture, Countryside and Land Management Services (ACLMS) with technical expertise from The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and supported by La Société and Guernsey Biological Record Centre (GBRC). The AWT is the coordinating bat centre for Alderney, aiming to survey all 48 study squares (500 x 500-m) across the island and Burhou.

The success of the BBS is down to the volunteers who sign up to survey one or more squares, often in their garden or on adjacent land. They are then provided with bat detectors to put up in their square for four nights in the first (April - mid-July) and second (mid-July - October) survey period. The sound recordings collected from the detectors is then fed into the BTO’s Acoustic Pipeline, where they are identified to species using machine learning. At the end of the year, the BTO then manually verify the records.

Aims

Improve our understanding of the status, distribution and timing of occurrence of bat, bush-cricket and small mammal species that occur in the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
Involve and inspire a large section of the wider community to connect and engage with an aspect of nature that is poorly known and understood.
Help develop a community awareness of what bats do for us, what they require, why it is important to conserve them and how landowners and householders can enhance their properties for bats.

Highlights for Alderney

2021
- On Alderney, 21 citizen scientists volunteered to be involved in the project
- Across the Bailiwick, a total of 720,011 sound recording files were collected
- Two new species of bat were confirmed for Alderney!
  - Serotine (Eptesicus serotinus) - this was also a new record for Guernsey and Herm!
  - Kuhl's Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii) - records for this species were focused around Longis Road. It is possible that older data of this species exist for Alderney as it appears very widespread.
- The Bush-cricket Large Conehead (Ruspolia nitidula) was recorded on Alderney, Guernsey and Lihou - making this the first confirmation of its presence in the Channel Islands!
- In the past, our records of the Natterer's bat (Myotis nattereri) had been sporadic, however, results from the BBS for this species were focused around the Alderney Community Woodland (ACW).

2022
- On Alderney, 20 citizen scientists volunteered to get involved in the project
- Across the Bailiwick, a total of 3,389,138 sound recording files were collected
- Two new species of bat were confirmed for Alderney!
  - Common Noctule (Nyctalus noctula) - Alderney was the only place this species was recorded in 2022
  - Soprano Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pygmaeus) - this species had actually been recorded on Alderney before; however, this was the first time it was confirmed through the BBS
- The Great White-toothed Shrew (Crocidura russula) was shown to be extremely widespread on the islands it was recorded in Alderney, Guernsey and Herm. Acoustic recordings were collected from gardens, farmland and semi-natural habitats.
2023
- On Alderney, 17 citizen scientists volunteered to get involved in the project
- Across the Bialiwick, 3,825,977 sound recordings were collected
- Alderney recorded the only records of Soprano Pipistrelle and Large Conehead crickets in the Bailiwick

Want to get involved and find out which creatures of the night are flying near you?

We are looking for volunteers and citizen scientists to get involved in this fantastic project for 2024 and it's easy to do! Head over to https://bats.org.gg/ and follow the quick steps to reserve your square and bat detector. Then pop into The Alderney Wildlife Trust on Victoria Street to collect the kit and you are ready to go!

If you have any questions about the Bailiwick Bat Survey or need help booking your square, please contact:

Matt Lewis (Ecologist and Biodiversity Centre Manager) at ecologist(at)alderneywildlife.org