 |
| Photo: Nathusius' pipistrelle spectrogram. |
Encouraged by a beautiful day yesterday I decided to do a bit of bating last night and had the detector out. Most excitingly, I recorded two fly pasts of what Echo meter suggests is Nathusius' pipistrelle, along with the usual common and soprano pipistrelles and at least one noctule. Trouble is I'm not convinced that Echo meter is correct, bat detectors tend to give just an indication of the species rather than identify them with complete certainty. With common and soprano pipistrelle that's reasonably straight forward as it is with noctule, but other species are more difficult. Nathusius' pipistrelle usually broadcasts between 35-40khz, my bat is more like 42khz and until I get a recording under 40khz I don't think I'll ever be completely convinced.
Nathusius' pipistrelle was once thought of as a vagrant to the UK but is now considered a migrant species. This is not just a new species for the garden, it's one I've never recorded anywhere before.
 |
| Photo: Common pipistrelle spectrogram. |
 |
| Photo: Soprano pipistrelle spectrogram. |
 |
Image: Nathusius' pipistrelle
distribution map |
It's probably overlooked and under recorded so is likely much more common than was previously thought, but even so there are relatively few records in the UK. Looking at the distribution map for the species in the UK it's clear that there is a cluster of records in the Liverpool / Greater Manchester area, I'm not really sure why, perhaps it just because there are a lot of people with bat detectors in this area!
No comments:
Post a Comment