Discover the amazing work taking place in the dead of night each year by hoards of volunteers. This episode starts with Steve joining a team of these volunteers who are counting out a brown long-eared bat roost in the Derbyshire Dales at dusk as a nearby rookery gathers. We then sit down in Battersea Park, London with Philip Briggs, monitoring manager for the Bat Conservation Trust who collates all of this data sent in by volunteers and turns it into invaluable trends to establish how our bats are faring year on year in the UK. The National Bat Monitoring Programme is one of the longest running citizen science projects in the world and YOU, yes YOU can take part! There are surveys which need no prior experience.

• Get involved with the NBMP yourself here
• Take a look at the summary maps for each survey type
• Watch footage of the brown long-eared roost being counted out by Jill in this episode here as the bats return at dawn
• Read the latest NBMP report to see how our bats are faring
• Please leave us a review of the show as it helps us get BatChat discovered by other listeners. Instructions of how to leave your review in each of these places can be found here.

Competition Time!

We're running BatChat's first ever competition this series. Children's authors Angela Mills and Emma Reynolds have kindly donated prizes for our first ever competition! Angela has donated a copy of Bobby the brown long-eared bat signed by both Angela and Chris Packham and Emma has donated a copy of her newly released book Amara and the bats (see episode 26). To enter the competition to win one of these brilliant books, all you have to do is write us a review about the show and the two winners will be picked at random at the end of this series. Not all podcast apps allow you to leave reviews, so;

• if you’re an Apple device user, leave us a review on the Apple podcasts app which is already installed on your device.
• if you’re an Android user, you can leave us a review on the Podcast Addict app
• and if you don’t listen to the show on a mobile device you can write your review on the Podchaser website.
• Instructions of how to leave your review in each of these places can be found here. Remember, we need to be able to contact you if you win so when you leave your review, make sure you give us your twitter or Instagram handle in the review. If you don’t use these, drop us an email to comms@bats.org.uk with a copy of your review. We’re only able to post the prizes to addresses in the United Kingdom.

Join the conversation on social media using #BatChat:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BatConservationTrust
Twitter: https://tw

Thank you to Wildcare and Wildlife Acoustics for sponsoring the BatChat Podcast in 2021-2022.
Quote BATCHAT at the Wildcare checkout to redeem a free gift!
Visit wildlifeacoustics.com to learn more.

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