Microbat survey report, Sat 15 Nov

At last a warm day in Melbourne! Still was good to see some rain throughout the week, and the frogs and mole crickets were in full song. Many of us feeling a little tired after the AGM but buoyed by the fantastic talk by Russell Lark – Head Gardener of the Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation Laak Boorndap 1800m2 urban garden!

The evening was calm, quiet and humid. Along the way we also did some quick-fix weeding and rubbish collection – a lovely leisurely stroll. With our core group of 7 human monitors and a Bat-Cat “Cookie” (on lead) we set off and straight away found 2 out of 2 bats in the first 2 boxes.

As we are close to bat pupping season we decided to just do a quick check with the red light torch and take a note which bat species we found. We also decided it would be a good idea to check the pardalote bird boxes to see if they were being occupied.

All Goulds Wattled bats 16/45/43/10/11, both types of boxes occupied.

The 2 pardalote boxes we checked near Todd Rd entrance were empty, surprisingly it looked as if bat droppings may be evident. Disappointingly, at sunset and until 9:30 the echometers hardly registered bat calls. There were quite a few construction lights towards Lorimer St with circling silver gulls overhead – probably attracted to the moths. Are the lights/gulls keeping them away? We could see so many insects circling above our heads, there really was no lack of food!

I checked the recordings – one at 9:14 47 Mhz Little Forest bat? Another 2 at 9:27 28 Mhz flat hockey stick – Goulds Wattled Bat.

We were disappointed not to find many bats flying around in the calm night. We really need to borrow a passive in-situ echo recorder to monitor the late night skies when we can’t. If anyone knows where we can borrow one to set up over the next 3 months could you please let me know?

Many thanks all, Linda.

Conditions: Cloudy, 17 degrees C, Wind from South, Force 3, 13km/hour reducing to calm. Sunset 8:09pm 22% moon waning. High humidity 76%.