Publications

Bat in the hand

Group Meetings

Download the latest group meeting notes –

Newsletters

You can download the latest and previous Wiltshire Bat Group’s newsletter from here:

Feedback welcome – is there anything people particularly want to hear about? Contributions for future editions would be very welcome!

Self-guided walk leaflets

In 2023, the bat group launched a competition asking people to identify their favourite bat places in the county; these had to be places that could be shared with others, so they were not on private land, or required a bat licence to access them, or specialist survey skills.

During our November 2023 indoor meeting, the first three nominations were announced, detailed below. We are delighted to share the first of these walk leaflets, produced by the brilliant Richard Cassidy.

But watch this space – more leaflets are planned soon!

  1. Jubilee Lake, Royal Wootton Bassett (nominated by Bob Philpott)
  2. The Ebble, Coombe Bissett (nominated by Louise Hartgill)
  3. Cleveland Lakes Reserve (nominated by Ben Welbourn, Cotswold Lakes Trust)- coming soon

The Cotswold Water Park Bat Atlas 2005-to present

The atlas was produced in 2014, a distillation of over 10 years of study and research in the Cotswold Water Park, coordinated by the Cotswold Water Park Society (latterly the Cotswold Water Park Trust, and now the Cotswold Lakes Trust!), in conjunction with the local bat groups.

The final publication in 2014 was a project with Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre and the Cotswold Water Park Trust.

The CWP Bat Atlas can be downloaded here.

This project led to a number of spin-off projects, most notably the Braydon Forest Project, which focusses upon monitoring of Bechstein’s bats in this area, and of course, the Cotswold Water Park research continues today, largely through the efforts of Will Ponting and the monitoring of bat boxes, as well as roost monitoring by the county recorder.

Today, this project feels like it needs an update!

Safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults policy

The WBG_Safeguarding Policy_final_20180602.