The Bats in Churches project – get involved!

Sue Hetherington recently posted an item about her involvement with the Bats in Churches project: https://mknhs.org.uk/bats-in-churches-sue-hetherington/. She writes now with more information, and a new video link about the project.

The Bats in Churches survey season is closed for this year but it will open up again next summer and I am keen to encourage Society members to survey a church or two themselves.  The project team has been very proactive during the Covid-19 blighted 2020 season and has kept in touch with lots of zoom sessions.  There was a particularly useful one on 11th September of Bats in Churches’ first ever ‘virtual bat night’ from Heydon’s Holy Trinity Church in Cambridgeshire with talks from expert bat ecologist Phil Parker, Bats in Churches heritage advisor Rachel Arnold, and the clerk at Holy Trinity, Angela Bucksey.

The session was recorded, and can be accessed free (on YouTube) from Bats in Churches’ web page https://batsinchurches.org.uk/events/virtual-bat-nights/  – just scroll down to the box labelled “Watch it Here” and click on it.  The video is quite long at an hour and a quarter but you can fast forward over bits that you don’t find interesting.  The zoom covers a lot of ground:

  • Some basics about bats
  • An explanation of what the project is all about
  • A look at the church itself which is Holy Trinity located in Heydon, Cambridgeshire
  • Input from an ecologist (Phil Parker’s presentation begins 13 minutes in.)
  • Input from the churchwarden

The video explains about the project really clearly and why it would be such a good thing to sign up.  To emphasise, volunteers don’t need to be experts or have any special equipment.  It’s quite easy to do.  The project needs lots of people to help as there are 16,000 churches in England to survey – including some little gems of churches in Milton Keynes which would be great to monitor.

The season won’t open again until June 2021 so everyone has a few months to think about it.

Sue Hetherington
September 2020