Are you fascinated by bats or working towards your bat licence? This comprehensive course is designed to guide you through conducting bat activity surveys, including transect and emergence surveys. You’ll learn essential principles, survey timings and durations, how to plan and execute your survey, the equipment required, and how to accurately record your findings. We talk about how to use a bat detector and give a practical demonstration of how to do both a transect survey and an emergence survey. 

This course is designed to build your confidence and work on any skills or knowledge gaps you may have. It is ideal for aspiring bat workers, bat enthusiasts and subcontractors. 

Before you book this course you may want to do our more comprehensive Bat Ecology and Surveying online course instead which is more comprehensive and better value if you are starting out with your bat training.

This course comprises 3 videos:

Video 1: Bat Activity Surveys: Classroom session covering the underlying principles of how to plan and carry out Emergence and Transect surveys. We look at the timings of bat activity surveys, what you are looking for during the survey, the equipment needed and the health and safety considerations.

Video 2: How to do an emergence survey. Principal Ecologist Sue Searle, with 20 years of bat experience, takes you through the process of an emergence survey on a real site. Watch as bats emerge and see what equipment is sed, and how records are kept. 

Video 3: How to do a transect survey. Sue Searle takes you out to do a transect survey at a field/woodland site. She shows how to plan the route and use a bat detector, stopping stations, making records of bat sightings and timings of the survey.

This is an excellent introduction to practical surveying of bats outside the roost.

At the end there will be a short quiz and if you get over 70% you will receive a Certificate.

Other courses that would complement this course is Introduction to Bats, which covers the ecology, legislation, British bat species, bat habitats, conservation and more. Also Surveying Buildings for Bats which covers internal surveys of buildings, droppings, recording your findings and how to carry out an internal survey. Surveying Trees for Bats covers how bats use trees, what features to look for, survey methods and describing roost features.

Here’s what our students are saying:

I learned many things about how to carry out bat emergence and transects surveys during this course and I can already see improvement in my day-to-day consulting work. The course tutor was very professional and clearly highly qualified and knowledgeable and I will certainly recommend ETUK Courses to colleagues and others who are looking for ecology-related professional courses. The course delivery is well thought out and very convenient for professionals.

Ayan

A career change in your 40’s its quite a daunting prospect, and even though I had completed lots of self study, small courses and training- I knew there were likely a few gaps in my knowledge, so doing a full structured course made good sense. Whilst some of the content was quite familiar, I was surprised by just how big some of the knowledge gaps were – it really boosted my confidence studying the modules and realising why they were so important. It is a great course that I would recommend to anyone wanting to qualify in Conservation, and has certainly helped me in my new career working as part of a landscape recovery project team

Bill Bradshaw

I liked the ability to undertake the course at my own pace.

Naomi

The material was concise and easy to understand; I loved the flexibility and ability to get the qualifications done at your own pace; and Sue was brilliant!

Deren

Useful links, detailed information, great supporting photos

Claire

The teaching is excellent. It’s clear, precise and easy to follow. The knowledge from Sue is fantastic and it’s taught in a very understandable way with no rush. It’s been really good and I feel I’ve been able to retain the information well because of the way the course has been taught.

Max

ETUK is such wonderful and exciting resource. I came across an advertisement in British Wildlife. I appreciate how generous and comprehensive the information is. It’s very empowering to feel I can actually gain the tools to help to make an impact.

Anna