The early days

The Pembroke Bat Group technically came into being on Tuesday 11th June 1986 when a small group of local people interested in bats were invited to attend a meeting at Orielton Field Centre to discuss ways in which we could help each other with a variety of monitoring projects. David Harries and I had been counting Pipistrelle bats in the Warden's house at Orielton for the previous three years. Brian and Violet Smith had been doing simultaneous counts on Pipistrelles at Stackpole Court. We had knowledge of several other pip. colonies and needed help with June counts for the Annual Common Bat Census (organised by Bob Stebbings and Henry Arnold at ITE). Bob Haycock the CCW (then NCC) Warden at Stackpole, had been given responsibility for monitoring the recently discovered Greater Horseshoe nursery colony and was receiving requests under the Countryside and Wildlife act to visit roosts causing nuisance or under threat. It had also become clear that Carew Castle was an important feeding roost for Greater Horseshoes and there was concern that the bats might be disturbed by renovation work started by the National Park in recent months.

It was agreed at this first meeting that the group would be project based, giving members a chance to actively partake in field work and research, rather than it being just a talking shop. The majority of meetings would be field based at actual bat roosts and organised on an ad hoc mutual help basis. There would be, however,  an early spring meeting to coordinate the summer work programme and in the autumn we would meet to share the results of monitoring.

Over the next three years the work of the group centred on active field work on Pipistrelles, Greater Horseshoes at Carew under Jane Hodges (Ecologist for the PCNPA) and Lesser Horseshoes at Orielton. The counts on Lesser Horseshoes were coordinated by David Levell (OPRU) assisted by a devoted band of Jane Hodges, Peggy Ravenswood and John and Marion Bird. Bat Group members gave Bob Haycock and NCC (CCW) invaluable help with roost visits and, with the help of training from Tom McOwat and Bob Stebbings, six members obtained NCC (CCW) licences. By 1988 the membership had expanded to 20 people including several from North of the Haven: 45 people attended the main winter meeting when Phil Richardson came down from Northants to talk to us.

The scope expands

Following the annual general meeting held in April 1989, the geographical scope of the group was formerly extended to cover the whole of the county and renamed the Pembrokeshire Bat Group. To mark this event it was decided to publish the first and last Pembroke Bat Group report in which the first two and half years work were reviewed. The report included papers on Orielton pipistrelles (Robin Crump and David Harries) Carew Greater Horseshoes (Jane Hodges) Lesser Horseshoes at Orielton (David Levell) and a large bat box project in the Orielton woods (David Levell). Last but not least it included a summary of roost reports including distribution maps of all the known species by Bob Haycock.

To the present time

The Pembrokeshire Bat Group, sixteen years on, remains a relatively small project-based organisation with dedicated amateur bat workers carrying out survey work on a much wider range of species, over the whole of the county. It is perhaps time that a report on the latest work of the group was published, including the use of new technology by Annie Haycock and Margaret and Rupert Clarke in producing updated distribution maps of the greatly expanded spp. list. e.g Barbastelle and three spp. of  Pipistrelle.