The Sound Of Sopranos is a three-year project run by The Lancashire Wildlife Trust - with funding from the SITA Trust - aiming to establish this species of bat across our sites and reserves.

Meet the sopranos

Soprano pipistrelles were designated a separate species from the common pipistrelle within the last 15 years and this project hopes to establish the range of this species where they may have previously been labelled as common pipistrelles on Wildlife Trust sites.

More than 50 volunteers have been trained in bat ecology, using bat detectors and survey techniques.

This has given them the necessary background knowledge to go out on our nature reserves with bat detectors and recording equipment and look at which species are present and what habitat features they are using.

The results are then used to help draw up management plans, and are shared with other interested parties such as local record centres and bat groups.

What we are doing

Our volunteers have carried out bat surveys across 30 sites. The results are being collated in a report which includes management recommendations.

However, we are not only looking to see what bats are where, we are also taking volunteers out onto the sites to carry out practical habitat management which will be of benefit to the bats and increase their populations.

For example, we are creating hedgerows as flight lines, improving grasslands to increase invertebrates which are a valuable food source for the bats, managing woodlands for roosting sites and feeding areas, and erecting bat boxes on sites which will benefit the bats. All this management for bats also benefits other species.

Increasing invertebrate populations has a knock-on effect for birds, small mammals and amphibians. Hedgerows are beneficial to bats as flight lines, but also provide shelter and food for many other species.