Bats hanging in roof of museum.
The museum building provides a nursery roost for one of the largest colonies of soprano pipistrelle bats in the country. The female bats come into the museum in the Spring to roost and to produce and rear their young. Bats are unusual in that breeding pairs mate in the autumn but the young are not born until the summer. This is known as ‘delayed implantation’. The babies or ‘pups’ are born naked and blind but their fur soon appears and covers their bodies and their eyes are open within a few days. They depend on their mother for the first six weeks.
Last year, we carried out regular bat counts throughout the spring / summer season. Counting bats involves standing outside the roost for an hour after dusk and recording the numbers of individuals exiting the building in ten minute intervals. The bats return to our building following hibernation in early spring.
2017 results:-
20 February: First soprano pipistrelles emerge from hibernation and are detected flying pre-dawn during a mild spell of weather.
6 April: 70
13 April: 218
20 April: 408
27 April: 149 (cold evenings may explain this drop on previous week)
4 May: 594
11 May: 650
18 May: 734 (a record count!)
25 May: 716
30 May: 705
21 June: 376 (some bats are now nursing their young and stay in roost)
6 July: 499
13 July: 382
27 July: 241
10 August: 124
18 August: 132
2016 results as follows:-
14 April: 116
21 April: 321
5 May: 714
12 May: 433
26 May: 647
2 June: 605
9 June: 575
16 June: 507
28 July: 383 (colony is now dispersing)
8 Aug: 291
18 Aug: 266
23 Aug: 203
8 Sept: 121
15 Sept: 93
22 Sept: 23
6 Oct: 10
10 Oct: 3
For more info on bats in Ireland go to:- http://www.batconservationireland.org/
