Assistant Ranger Zander and I had a fabulous day yesterday, checking for bats around the reserve with ecologist Lindsay Mackinlay from Parnassus Ecology. We found several bat boxes containing bats, including pipistrelles and this roost of 11 Daubenton's bats. Lindsay also checked the roofs of our buildings and found bats in both of them, which is great news. It is illegal to disturb bat roosts (Lindsay has a license which permits him to carry out these sort of checks) so if ...you do suspect you have bats in a box or in your roof it best to leave well alone. However if you do have bats in a building and you need to carry out some work, you can contact Scottish Natural Heritage who can give you information on how to do this with minimal disturbance to the bats. For more information see the Bat Conservation Trust: http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/bats_and_the_law.html and http://www.bats.org.uk/pages/building_remedial_work.html
Lizy

Daubenton's bats in bat box