Last week our in-house Ecology and Conservation Manager, Paul Cassidy, hosted a bat walk on a Meadfleet development in Halifax for the residents and local community. Paul was joined by Emlyn Craven, the areas Operations Manager. See below the fantastic turnout of community members!!
The group walked around the public open space on the development and set up within patch of mature woodland that has a stream flowing through. Many bat species roost in woodland but the ones that don’t will regularly visit the woodland for foraging so this was the perfect place for bat spotting. The stream provides water for rehydrating along with a number of small insects – perfect for bats to eat.
Did you know a bat can eat over 3,000 insects in one night?!
They managed to spot one of the UK’s smallest bat in flight, the common pipistrelle, which has a wingspan of around 20cm. Although these bats can see perfectly well in the dark, they use ‘echolocation’ to navigate and find food. They emit a sound, which is outside of our range of hearing, and listen for the returning echo as the soundwave bounces back from the object.
Paul had a number of bat detectors at hand during the bat walk, which are specially designed to convert the inaudible ultra-sonic sounds to frequencies we can hear.
A huge thank you to the community for taking part in this bat walk, and to Paul and Emlyn for hosting such a fantastic event!
If you and your community would like to host a bat walk, or a similar event, let us know at customercare@meadfleet.co.uk
About Meadfleet
Meadfleet are a leading sustainable land-adopting management company. We have in-house ecologists with expertise in the BNG metric and are already applying the principles of Biodiversity Net Gain across our existing open space portfolio in England and Wales. Established in 1995, Meadfleet manage over 330 developments and 42,000 residential properties in our portfolio, with a strong balance sheet.
Meadfleet offers management of Biodiversity Net Gain delivery both on a managed development and on offsite areas, either via customer contributions or commuted sums. Our adoption model relieves developers of ongoing liabilities and management costs.
The Meadfleet model removes onerous liabilities from homeowners yet still encourages their input and engagement into the management of their local environment. We are committed to providing an excellent service to residents as demonstrated by our Excellent rating on Trustpilot and are members of The Property Ombudsman Scheme (TPOS), offering customers free, independent redress should they feel it is required. We are happy to work with residents groups and positively encourage the creation of these on the developments we are involved with. We believe this opens an effective two-way dialogue between homeowners and ourselves.
As a land-adopting management company, Meadfleet take long-term responsibility of open space, building customer and community relations and implementing perpetual management and improvement plans. We take a holistic and independent approach to managing areas of open space for the benefit of all residents, biodiversity and the wider environment.