Bat Survey - House, Neath
Background
This spacious detached home has recently changed owners. As part of renovating the existing property into the perfect 'forever home' for the family, we were called in to conduct a bat survey.
Preliminary Roost Assessment
Our bat surveys always start with a PRA - a visual internal and external inspection to assess how suitable the property is for bats. During the PRA on this property, we identified several features that could be utilised by bats, such as gaps under soffits, lifted roof tiles, and gaps under hanging tiles.
These are potential points bats can use to gain access to the building. From there, they make their way to more comfortable roosting areas. During the PRA, we do what we can to inspect these potential roosting areas, which can include endoscoping certain features where possible (such as the hanging tiles in the photo above!), but usually only involves a thorough loft inspection to look for bats or evidence of bats.
During this loft inspection, we did not bump into any bats in the flesh, but we did find evidence that they had been roosting here previously - some scattered bat droppings over the loft insulation.
Dusk Emergence Surveys
The bat droppings we found during the PRA means that we know the property has been used as a bat roost at some point. In order to gather as much information about the nature of the roost present, we then moved on to the next stage of a bat survey - the dusk emergence surveys. The purpose of these surveys is to confirm whether bats are still roosting at the property, how they are accessing the property, what species are present, and how many bats of each species are present.
Despite the bat droppings in the loft, our surveys were quiet! There were a few bats flying down the street in the first survey, but none from the property. During the second survey, we caught a bat on camera flying out from the hanging tiles we showed you above, but still nothing from the loft space! Surprisingly, we had no bats from the property on the third dusk emergence survey either, a surprise given the bat droppings we found, but a great example of how things can change between surveys.
Next Steps
Although we didn't find exactly what we expected, we will still require a bat licence for this development as a loft conversion will lead to the destruction of the bat roost in the loft space. The conversion and renovation works can continue as planned, but a licence will be in place to ensure that the bats will be taken care of and protected throughout the development, and will have a roost to return to following the works.
Are you planning a similar development and have been asked for a bat survey? Get in touch to see how we can help you!
