Social calls of the Pond bat (Myotis dasycneme)
Recordings from 2024
To listen to social calls of the pond bat, you can visit the files of the following lists on Xeno Canto:
- Type A social calls of different species of bats
- Type B (roosting) social calls of multiple species of bats
- Type B (in flight) social calls of multiple species of bats
- Type C.i (low frequency qCF) social calls recorded in the vicinity of maternity roosts
- Type C social calls of multiple species of bats
These type A, B and C social calls were recorded when at least 425 individual pond bats were counted emerging from their maternity roost.
These type C social calls were recorded near a big waterway. They are emitted by a pond bat that was showing defensive behavior towards the Daubenton's bat whose echolocation is also present in the recording. For pond bats, these calls may be warning calls made when other trawling bats (i.e. Daubenton's bat) are around at times when prey is less available and/or in order to protect a good hunting area (Middleton et. al., 2022).
Date of recording: 2024-06-06 Recorded by: Anice Hut Audio file: 911253
This is assumed to be an axtra long feeding buzz of a pond bat, but the going down in frequency to go up and down again is kind of off:
Date of recording: 2024-07-12 Recorded by: Esmee Mooi Audio file: 920367
These series of FM calls (underneath the echolocation of the Nathusius' pipistrelle in the first snippit) were recorded earlier on the evening and show a lot of similarity with the feeding buzz. Marc van de Sijpe stated that he would be surprised if calls like these would have a sole echolocation function of prey approach and capture and that it would not be surprising if these calls are aggresive calls as a reaction to kleptoparasitism - when another animal wants to steal the prey (Neil Middleton, et al., 2022).
Date of recording: 2024-07-11 Recorded by: Karlijn Ton Audio file: 920371
These social calls were recorded about 25 minutes before the type B social calls in the previous recording. Just before and after this recording, echolocation of a pond bat was heard. Perhaps, these are some sort of distress calls of the pond bat, similar to the two examples on page 183 of the book "Bat Calls of Britain and Europe" edited by Jon Russ (2021). But this is just a theory.
Date of recording: 2024-07-11 Recorded by: Esmee Mooi Audio file: 920374
More type B social calls were recorded by three different people on the same survey site on different moments during the same evening:
When at least two pond bats were passing by and within audible range for a short moment, a high frequency social call was recorded (between 2,435 s and 2,450 s). Sometimes only the hook of the "walking cane" shaped social calls are present, what might be the case.
Date of recording: 2024-05-23 Recorded by: Tristan Sneekes Audio file: 911607
Multiple very similar social calls were recorded, again with at least two individual pond bats present:
Date of recording: 2024-08-26 Recorded by: Fabienne Schwab Audio file: 936309
All recordings are licensed under the following Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 license and in courtesy of Sarah Mahie.
All the original video footage can be found on our Youtube channel: United by Ecology
All sonograms are screenshots of the recordings imported in the ultrasound analysis software BatExplorer 2.2 (Elekon, Switzerland).
Literature list:
- Jon Russ (2021). Bat Calls of Britain and Europe: a Guide to Species Identification. Pelagic Publishing.
- Neil Middleton, Andrew Froud and Keith French (2022). Social Calls of the Bats of Britain and Ireland (second edition). Pelagic Publishing.
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