This week All Saints’ Church took part in the Bats in Churches project.
The Bats in Churches project is a unique partnership between Natural England, the Church of England, the Bat Conservation Trust, the Churches Conservation Trust, and Historic England that was created to address the issues that bats can cause in churches while continuing to protect their roosts.
Funded by a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project endeavours to empower church communities to live alongside and appreciate their resident bats by helping to alleviate some of the pressures that they can cause.
Bats, particularly in large numbers can cause considerable damage to the church fabric and also make major projects more complicated. They are also an important species whose habitat is declining. We were contacted by Peter, a volunteer bat detective who supports the work of the project in this area.
Peter visited All Saints’ to undertake a survey of the Church. We completed a questionnaire about evidence of bats, the type of building we have and our attitude to bats. A bat detector was left in the church for two nights to see what kind of activity there was.
Peter, our ‘batman’ checked around the church including all the nooks and crannies for evidence of bats in the form of bat poo and the remains of the insects that they eat.
Peter thinks that we have a brown long eared bat and a common pipistrelle in our church.. Samples were taken for DNA testing but we won’t get the results until the end of the year.
(picture Bat Conservation Trust)
You can find out more about these bats and others found in the UK on the Bat Conservation Trust website.