A large bat with reddish-brown fur and rounded ears. In Britain, it roosts in tree holes and emerges early in the evening to catch insects.
It is a large bat with bright ginger fur, rounded ears and long, narrow wings.
When bats fly near a turbine, do radar and microphones record the same activity? At an onshore wind park in Germany, researchers selected 323 flight tracks from night-time radar images and compared them with ultrasound recordings from a detector near the turbine nacelle. The two instruments observed flight over different areas.
About 32% of tracks could potentially be linked to calls by their timing, direction and distance; many others crossed the radar volume outside the microphone’s detection area. This study examined selected intervals at one site and measured flight detections, not collisions or deaths. Monitoring results need to be interpreted in light of each instrument’s detection range.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
At one site, most radar tracks passed outside the microphone’s detection area. Wind-farm monitoring should document the range of each method and keep flight activity distinct from assessments of collision or mortality.