Living The Wildlife

Crows in Westport & Bats (3x6)

Air date: Jun 08, 2010

In the final programme in the series, Colin Stafford-Johnson is on the trail of Ireland's bat population Emmy-Award winning wildlife cameraman Colin Stafford-Johnson is on the trail of Ireland’s much maligned bat population in the final programme of this third series of RTÉ’s very popular nature programme, Living the Wildlife. In this week’s programme presenter Colin Stafford-Johnson meets Daniel Buckley, a Phd student with the Centre for Bat Research in UCD, Dublin. Along with a team of postgraduate students from Queens University, the ‘batmen’ of UCD have discovered some strange bat behaviour in caves around Ireland. Colin really enjoys meeting people who have a similar passion for wildlife so he is delighted to catch up with them as they are about to explore Dunmore Cave in Kilkenny. This is the only cave in the area and the students believe this could be an important site. Bats that normally live in woodland and near rivers are flying to caves and engaging in social calling. Daniel believes this is part of a mating ritual and the team are setting up traps to find out what species of bat are visiting caves in autumn.