2016 was another busy year for BiOMEs Norfolk-based bat surveyors. Richard leads the Norfolk bat team and we completed many bat surveys throughout the county.

We carried out over 20 preliminary bat roost assessments in a variety of buildings, many in barns planned for conversion, but also in homes proposed for redevelopment, holiday cabins, cart sheds and even in a Methodist chapel that housed dinosaur bones!

We also completed a large volume of bat tree work in 2016, with one pipeline job keeping us busy for several weeks with the full spectrum of bat surveys completed, from preliminary ground level bat roost assessments to potential bat roost feature surveys using our tree climbing qualified surveyors. Our experienced team of surveyors also completed many nocturnal bat emergence and re-entry surveys and had some great results, with the discovery of tree-roosting Noctules and Whiskered-type Bats during the same dawn survey the highlight.

We secured European Protected Species mitigation licences for a number of our Norfolk bat projects. These licences included a diverse array of mitigation techniques including whole-scale use of bespoke one-way bat excluder devices in one ‘airy’ barn complex, and the extensive deployment of our team of Clerk of Works (CoW) who became very adept at plucking out individual Brown Long-eared Bats from the ridge of one barn complex in north Norfolk in particular.

Mist-netting was undertaken at a number of sites, both as part of our consultancy bat projects as well as assisting the Norfolk Barbastelle Study Group.