In August, we introduced you to the roughly 7 species of bat that call Mount Falcon home on any given night. On one particular cool and clear evening we joined National Parks and Wildlife Service Ranger Alison Delaney on the west bank of the southern half of the Mount Falcon Fishery as she collected data for the Waterways Bat Survey. On the heels of Ranger Delaney’s visit, and in cooperation with Bat Conservation Ireland and Mayo Bat Group bat rehabber Mary Roberts, we installed a fixed bat song recorder near the lake in front of our Lakeside lodges to listen in for the sounds of bats over the course of a whole month. Ranger Delaney’s observations were done visually with the aid of a handheld acoustic device while walking down the banks of the river, while this longer observation used a recording device fixed to a tree in a location likely to yield bat “passes”.
The results of listening for nightly bat songs around the lake on Mary’s bat song meter, a recording device provided by Mayo Count Council Biodiversity Officer Sheila Murphy, yielded fascinating data. Five of the nine bat species which live in Ireland were recorded at Mount Falcon in this location during the four-week session.
Below are examples of bat sounds from this survey as they appear on the Kaleidoscope software run on the song meter:
Common Pipistrelle
Common Pipistrelle audio signature. 1
Daubenton’s
Daubenton's bat audio signature. 1
Each bat sound file is known as a bat “pass”, according to Mary’s report. “A single bat species makes many different sounds from hunting to social calls.”
From 19/08/2025 to 16/09/2025 the recorder captured over 450 passes and identified 7 different types of bats:
You can read Mary’s full report, linked here, but she was able to identify 6 of the 8 possible species here at Mount Falcon, with the Lesser Horseshoe and Whiskered bats absent.
In our next bat survey conducted with Mary’s help, we hope to install the song meter in a woodland area to see which species are present in that different ecosystem.
This project was delivered with the support of Mayo County Council and National Parks and Wildlife Service through the Local Biodiversity Action Fund 2025 in partnership with Bat Conservation Ireland and Mary Roberts of Mayo Bat Group. It is an action of the National Biodiversity Action Plan 2023 –2030.
