As announced in the previous blog post, here is the trailer and the ‘review’ of the workshop above. It was a pleasure to ‘work out’ the topic and later the hatching boxes with the participants. Thanks to everyone who took part.
Refuge for busy night gliders
Bat box construction
Active workshop with Klaus Heinzel
Sunday, 3 November 2024 | 14:00 - 17:30 hrs
They see with their ears, fly with their hands and sleep with their heads down. And no, they don't drink our blood and are not aggressive as long as they are not threatened.
Bats are fascinating nocturnal creatures that play a crucial role in many ecosystems, especially in pest control.
Every night, bats can eat 80 to 100 per cent of their own body weight in insects. A colony of 150 bats, for example, consumes around 800,000 beetles and 500,000 cicadas or bugs every night. This makes them not only important service providers for natural ecosystems, but also for agricultural landscapes.
However, many bat populations are now highly endangered. The causes are manifold: loss of habitat, use of pesticides, road traffic or wind turbines.
With the increase in urban development and the loss of natural habitats, bats need new refuges. A bat roost box is a practical solution to provide the animals with safe nesting sites and help to stabilise local bat populations and promote biodiversity.
In his workshop, Klaus Heinzel will take us into the fascinating world of night gliders, show us lots of interesting details about the life of flying mammals and help us build a suitable hatching box that each participant can install in their garden. The assembly of prefabricated parts is easy and fun and the result will be impressive.
As well as making an active contribution to environmental and species protection, this will make spending time in the garden on warm summer evenings noticeably more pleasant, as bats love to hunt mosquitoes.
Please bring the necessary materials with you if you have them:
Cordless screwdriver
chisel
paintbrush
Hot air gun
Soldering iron
Here is the link to the trailer
Here is the ‘gleanings’
An extraordinary interview
Nobody had expected this. Klaus Heinzel's workshop had a few surprises in store. The speaker known to us as Mister Bien mutated into a surprising Batman, who instead of a lecture presented an extraordinary interview thanks to Andreas' “programming action”. But one thing at a time.
Firstly, important questions had to be clarified, such as can bats be eaten? And if so, what do they taste like? Klaus Heinzel had dared to do the self-test the day before and brought along a sample for the workshop participants. Admittedly, it was an unusual start that made some corners of the mouth drop spontaneously. What did this have to do with species conservation? And yet most of the participants were delighted with the crispy delicacies. You can find the answer in the picture gallery.
Before we got down to the hard facts, a second question had to be answered: Can you hear bats? No way! Of course not, because the ultrasonic calls of bats are far beyond the range of human hearing, promptly stated 11-year-old Tim, who as the youngest participant in the workshop obviously already had a lot of prior knowledge.
But he didn't reckon with the speaker's subtlety. You can actually hear the bat. The complete audio sample would have taken over two hours and would have clearly gone beyond the scope of the workshop, but we were ‘ear witnesses’ to the overture by Johann Strauss, who dedicated an entire operetta to Die Fledermaus in 1874.
We then moved on to the world premiere in a lively mood. Instead of the usual lecture format, Klaus Heinzel presented us with an interview with a brash long-eared bat, whose answers were made audible through a ‘magic programme’ by Andreas.
Questions about origin, species diversity, eating habits, preferred habitats, sleeping positions, flight speeds, special abilities and threats were answered comprehensively - albeit somewhat from above - by the oddball evening bat.
The nine-times smart bat did not miss the opportunity to make the human species look bad in direct comparison.
The humorous ‘info part’ of the workshop was also a nice preparation for the subsequent practical part, in which each participant was able to build a hatching box.
Thanks to the perfectly prepared kits, the participants drilled, screwed, painted and engraved together to create attractive shelters that will provide the hard-working helpers in the garden with safe havens in the future. To summarise: an entertaining, amusing, creative and sustainable afternoon. Our thanks go to Klaus Heinzel and the concordiaNATURA foundation.
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