Group Meetings
Download the latest group meeting notes –
- Wiltshire Bat Group Meeting 12 May 2022
- Wiltshire Bat Group Meeting April 20 2023
- Wiltshire Bat Group Meeting and AGM 9 November 2023
- Wiltshire Bat Group Meeting 11 April 2024 FINAL
Newsletters
You can download the latest and previous Wiltshire Bat Group’s newsletter from here:
- WBG Newsletter Spring 2024
- WBG Newsletter Spring 2023 v3
- WBG Newsletter Spring 2022 v3
- WBG Newsletter Spring 2021 v3
- WBG Newsletter Spring 2020
- WBG Newsletter Spring 2019
- WBG Newsletter Spring 2018
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!
- Jubilee Lake, Royal Wootton Bassett (nominated by Bob Philpott)
- The Ebble, Coombe Bissett (nominated by Louise Hartgill)
- 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!