Championing bats across Teesside and the Cleveland area
Thanks to DNA analysis of bat droppings, researchers can now read a bat's dinner menu in extraordinary detail. We look at what Cleveland's pipistrelles are really eating on a summer night — and what it tells us about the state of our insect populations.
Beneath the thunder of the A19 and the rumble of the railway, bats have quietly moved into some of Teesside's least glamorous real estate. We talk to the ecologists who monitor our bridge-dwelling colonies — and explain why a lump of 1970s concrete might be the best roost in Cleveland.
Found a planning application that could flatten a roost you know about? Before you fire off an angry email, learn how the planning system actually works. This is a practical walkthrough of reading ecology reports, spotting weak survey evidence, and writing an objection that planners are legally obliged to take seriously.
Follow three soprano pipistrelles from cold, collapsed and grounded to full aerial fitness, all thanks to a handful of trained volunteers in Guisborough. Along the way, we unpick what you can legally do when you find a bat in trouble — and what absolutely must be left to the experts.
From vampire legends to fears about disease, the same old bat myths keep surfacing at every fete and school visit we run. Here are the six we hear most often — and the friendly, practical comebacks our volunteers use to win people over.
Disused railway tunnels, brick bridges and forgotten culverts have quietly become some of Teesside's most important bat habitat. We explore the industrial relics our bats now call home — and argue it's time conservationists celebrated our built landscape rather than apologising for it.
Teesside is building fast — and every field, barn and mature hedgerow is potential habitat for the pipistrelles and brown long-eared bats that share it. We look at how the planning system handles roosts, where it stumbles, and what bat workers can actually do when the diggers arrive.
Your back garden could be the difference between a hungry pipistrelle and a well-fed one. Here's how to stock the nocturnal larder — from moth-magnet flowers to a humble washing-up bowl pond — with tips from Cleveland Bats members who've done it.
Bats are all around us on Teesside after dark — you just can't hear them. With a modest detector or even your phone, you can start identifying species from your local park or riverbank. Here's everything you need to get started, responsibly.
Tucked behind lychgates and under Victorian slates, some of Teesside's most important bat roosts hide in plain sight — inside the area's historic parish churches. We argue it's time parishes, heritage bodies and conservationists pulled together properly to protect them.
Grab a torch, a jumper and a cheap bat detector — these riverside walks along the Tees offer some of the most reliable bat sightings in the North East. Our guide tells you where to go, when to go, and what you're likely to hear.
Common and soprano pipistrelles live all around us on Teesside, yet most of us never glimpse their year-round drama. We follow these tiny hunters through the seasons, from bustling summer nurseries to frosty hibernation haunts.