A recent article caught my attention in the Australasian Bat Society (ABS) Newsletter, Number 43, Late 2014 by Robert Bender, Stephen Griffiths and Lindy Lumsden titled Bats breeding in Melbourne roost boxes. The Batting4Bayside project in Bayside is busy making bat boxes and planning to monitor them as our local residents put the bat boxes up in their own gardens. The three species mentioned in the article have all been identified from Bayside too.

One of the aims of the Batting4Bayside microbat project is to get some idea as to which species of bat may be found in which area of Bayside. We asked Anabat borrowers to use the Anabat's voice recording feature to record their location to enable us to match bat records with location.

With the help of many volunteers, the Batting For Bayside project has been collecting records of microbats in Bayside using Anabat detectors. These detectors can detect and record the high-pitched call made by these tiny little bats as they fly around at night. Microbats may be almost impossible to see, but with the help of this technology we can hear their presence.

An added benefit of the Anabat detectors is that we can download the calls to a computer. Using special software, we then try to identify the bat species.