Bat Haven in Pensford Field

A bat survey was undertaken by Habitats and Heritage between 9 and 13 July 2022 in Pensford Field. It’s official - the field is a haven for bats! The vast majority found in the field were soprano pipistrelle (around 2500 soundings) as well as 300 soundings of the common pipistrelle. There were much rarer soundings of other species - Noctule, Leisler, Brown Long-eared Bat and Serotine.

Soprano pipistrelles apparently like a good pond and are probably foraging on a nightly basis. This probably makes us an important haven in Richmond and hopefully Pensford Field might appear on the next leaflet produced by the Richmond Biodiversity Partnership. If you want to know more about these wonderful creatures, see here.

It is planned to encourage more bats by installing bat boxes - but they seem to be quite fussy about size of chambers, siting of the boxes etc so a bit of research is required. Let us know if you know of any experts able to help.