Social calls of the Daubenton's bat (Myotis daubentonii)

Recordings from 2024

To listen to social calls of the Daubenton's bat, you can visit the files of the following lists on Xeno Canto:
- Type B (in flight) social calls of multiple species of bats
- Type C.d (high frequency FM) social calls of multiple (stationary) species of bats
- Type C social calls of multiple species of bats

A few Daubenton's bats have already gathered in their hibernation area (two underground bunkers located in a military base) and were currently roosting at this location. We were conducting a count. A few individual bats were disturbed by the use of a flashlight and they started to emit type C social calls.

In the first snippit, the type C social calls are followed by type B social calls while bat flew away.

Date of recording: 2024-09-27          Recorded by: Sarah Mahie, Boudewijn Pijfers, Boaz van Die          Audio file: 936235, 936236, 936237, 936238, 936240, 936241           Photos by: Sarah Mahie

The following type C social calls were recorded while cycling through a residential area, near a known hibernating area: the subterranean marl quarries of the Sint Pietersberg. The recording was made an hour after sundown, presumably not much later than the Daubenton's bats leaving their roost.

Date of recording: 2024-08-07          Recorded by: Charlotte Serrarens          Audio file: 932985 

The following walking stick shaped social calls were recorded when Daubenton's bats were seen foraging above the water surface. It is unclear why these calls are emitted, but when they are recorded it is usually while foraging, and with more than one bat present. Similar calls are produced by the pond bat, another Myotis species, especially during what appears to be disputes between bats durin foraging activity (Middleton et al., 2022).

Date of recording: 2024-09-12          Recorded by: Sarah Mahie, Boaz van Die         Audio file: 933418, 933476, 933477 

Altough faintly visible in the background, the arch of the walking stick shape is very prominent in these calls. Recorded near a park pond.

Date of recording: 2024-08-24          Recorded by: Declan Frerichs          Audio file: 931817 

All recordings are licensed under the following Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 license and in courtesy of Sarah Mahie.
All sonograms are screenshots of the recordings imported in the ultrasound analysis software BatExplorer 2.2 (Elekon, Switzerland). 

 

Literature list:

- Neil Middleton, Andrew Froud and Keith French (2022). Social Calls of the Bats of Britain and Ireland (second edition). Pelagic Publishing.