Back in 2007, the Bat Conservation Trust published the first edition of ‘Bat Surveys: Good Practice Guidelines’, with the aim to provide some clarity on the different types of survey and survey effort needed to provide appropriate information for ecological assessments. Since 2007, new developments in equipment, methods, and legislation have meant that revision of the bat survey guidelines is needed.

Having become the UK's acknowledged experts in the use of the Wildlife Acoustics’ SM2 range of full spectrum recorders, Baker Consultants Ltd has been commissioned by the manufacturer to provide field support to their UK users.

Paul reports on his trip to the Mammal Society Conference in Bangor. He attended talks on Dormice, badger mitigation and brown hares among other creatures and had a great group for his SM2 workshop. Read the full story here.

In a very short period of time the SM2BAT from Wildlife Acoustics has become recognised as an industry-standard remote bat detector and is widely used by consultants, universities and researchers.

Superior field equipment that records more calls brings with it the challenge of larger volumes of data to analyse.

Baker Consultants is now able to offer a full data processing service to assist in the analysis of bat survey field recordings. Using our library of bat call ‘recognisers’ our experienced bat ecologists can provide a cost-effective, independent analysis of SM2 recordings.

SM2BAT COURSE DATES FOR 2011/12

Thursday 3rd November 2011

Thursday 16th February 2012

Thursday 15th March 2012

WILDLIFE ACOUSTICS ANNOUNCES THE ECHO METER EM3 ULTRASONIC DETECTOR AND RECORDER

At the UK National Bat Conference last week, Wildlife Acoustics announced a new hand-held bat detector and recorder. As you would expect there was great excitement in the Baker Consultants office and Paul couldn't wait to get his hands on one.

Paul said: "It's a unique piece of kit, finally we have access to something that not only captures and records bat calls, but also shows the calls in real-time as they come in on the screen."

Indeed, a cheap football gag, but also a serious issue for those of us who care where Paul Howden-Leach will be appearing next on the Autumn round of conferences and workshops.

I thought I’d let you know where you can catch up with us this Autumn. Aside from the usual site work and reporting, Paul and Andrew are busy writing presentations and digesting the recent updates to the SM2BAT to present some new ideas at a range of events this season.

Today's themes were Cumulative effects, Tools and technology, Mitigation and compensation and Future challenges.

Again, a huge amount of interesting and relevant information which will immediately be put into practice. Our approach to ecology for wind farm developments is going to get a right good shake up next week! I'm not going to go through all the good stuff about measuring and adjusting for impact, and associated stats - that's not for this forum, I am going to take a philosophical direction tonight.

Susan reports on day two of the Wind Energy and Wildlife Impacts conference in Norway.

The sessions today were: species-specific vulnerabilities and population effects, behavioural and spatial responses, collision risk modelling and Methods and statistics.