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occupying such a place and this applies even in
houses and outbuildings. The only exception is
for bats in the living area of a house.
Therefore, any study now requires a licence to
be issued by the Nature Conservancy Council and
it means that householders complaining to
Environmental Health Departments about bats in
their properties can no longer receive help.
With this in mind I contacted Maldon and
Chelmsford Public Health Departments last summer
and all complaints about bats were forwarded to
me. It was, therefore, possible to visit houses
with roosts and to count emerging bats. A
total of 14 roosts were visited yielding 13
colonies of Pipistrelles and 1 of Serotines.
The usual number was 50-100, but at one house
a total of 507 Pipistrelles emerged during three
quarters of an hour. All of these roosts
will be revisited during 1983 to monitor any
change in population.
Two species new to the survey, Noctule and Brown
Long-Eared bat were recorded in 1982, and the
number of records now stands at:-
Pipistrelle from 12 10 km. squares
Brown Long-Eared from 4 10 km. squares
Noctule from 1 10 km. square
Serotine from 1 10 km. square
Daubentons from 1 10 km. square
A disadvantage of visiting roosts is that I am
collecting a lot of records of Pipistrelles, to
the exclusion of other species. However, from
a conservation standpoint, it is vital to ensure
that roosts are left undisturbed, and even
encouraged, and I am encouraged that all the roosts
from 1982 will still be "available" to bats in
1983. There must, however, be a lot of roosts
in the county where the owners are quite happy