大象传媒

It's true that bats aren't everyone's favourite creature - altogether a disturbing little creature in some people's view, but really, apart from looking very fierce, they are quite engaging creatures.

Identifying bat species from the computer screen

I went off to Mahorall Farm at Nash on the southern slopes of Clee Hill to try to rehabilitate their image

Peter King-Turner, the farmer at Mahorall showed me some of his buildings that make ideal bat roosts - some of the creatures actually in the house.

Listen to the first audio piece as bat specialist John Robinson joins us with his 'little black box'.

As the bats fly out, John, Peter and I stand in the dark in the farmyard. His equipment allows us to actually hear the bats. John can even make a start at identifying the individual species from the geiger-counter-like noise that issues from the machine.

Back at John's house, we load the bat recordings into his computer for his software to analyse the calls of the Mahorall bats. We found that not only did we identify the expected pipistrelles, but simultaneously we could pick out other species.

Quite exciting and fascinating to hear an expert at work - you just have to listen for yourself.