The Louis Hue lamp beam swept away the darkness, revealing several small motionless brown masses, suspended by the legs in the roof of the barn. “One, two, three” Counts the naturalist of the Picardie Nature association. A fourth, awakened by the agitation, slalom between the beams, ranging the ultrasonic detector. “This is a small rhinolopher, we recognize them by the noise of extraterrestrials they emit to move”he specifies.
After a complete inspection of the exploitation of Michel Gobron, in Sainte-Croix (Aisne), eighteen bats are identified. Less than the sixties seen during the last visit, made in early July, just after the stake period period. “I’m going to end up becoming Batman”jokes the farmer. In addition to its barn, abandoned, which serves as shelter for large isolated rhinolophers and maternity males to a colony of small rhinolophes – two endangered species in the region, its attic welcomes a colony of common serotines.
The 80 hectares of Mr. Gobron (corn, wheat, barley and rapeseed) are part of around thirty farms where lodgings have been identified as part of the action plan in favor of chiroptera-the scientific name of bats-in Hauts-de-France. A strategy that aims to brake the decline of several species, such as the common noctula, whose populations fell by more than 50 % between 2006 and 2023, or the common pipistrelle, which lost a quarter of its workforce during the same period.
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