The first Tabachka Bat workshop was held in September 2012 partly at the Tabachka Bat Research Station (TBRS) which is located in the Rusenski Lom Nature Park. Nine young people from Bulgaria (7) and Romania (2) participated in the workshop.

 

On the first day the participants learned to know each other and were informed about the program of the workshop. Afterwards they were introduced to the scientific work at the TBRS and the methods for handling captive bats.

 

The second day started with lectures about bat taxonomy and methods how to study bats in science with few examples from actual research projects at the field station. In the afternoon everybody had the chance to practice setting up several mist nets.

 

After dinner we headed out for the first catching event in an area near the field station. Mist nets were set close to and along a river stream and at the entrance of a cave. The participants had the chance to practice taking bats out of a mist net and to identify bats.

 

On the third day the participants had an introduction to the Rusenski Lom Nature Park. We went to the Orlova Chuka cave, which is a very important bat cave in Bulgaria. After the tour in the cave we went back to Tabachka and had a discussion about Bat conservation with examples from Germany and Bulgaria.

 

In the evening we went back to the Orlova Chuka cave to catch bats with a harp trap in front of the cave. Captured bats were identified by the participants and similar species were compared to each other. Differences between the species were discussed in the group.

 

On the last day we talked about public outreach possibilities and had final discussions about different topics.

 

We want to thank all the participants of the workshop for their motivated and active participation. Special thanks go to all our colleagues from the TBRS that helped during the workshop especially to Dr. Sébastien Puechmaille, Dipl. Biol. Antonia Hubancheva, Dipl. Biol. Ingrid Kaipf, Dietmar Nill and Dipl. Biol. Markus Schuller. We thank Eng. Milko Belberov the director of the Rusenski Lom Nature Park/Bulgaria for the provided support and help. We are very grateful to EUROBATS for the financial support which made it possible to conduct the workshop without financial problems. And we thank the Max Planck Society/Germany especially the Sensory Ecology (Siemers) Group and PD Dr. Björn M. Siemers for allowing us and supporting us to conduct the workshop with material and other resources of the Tabachka Bat Research Station.

 

This summary is also available as a PDF here.