European Bat Night 2003 - KOBILJE

In Kobilje in Goričko there is a summer colony of Greater mouse-eared bats in Saint Martin Church.

In fact this is the biggest and almost the only maternity colony of this species in all of Prekmurje. For a number of years we have periodically observed the colony and determined that 400 females with young gather there.

Like all our bats they feed on insects. Myotis prefer appetizing bugs from the family Carabidae. At a prior inspection we noticed that a great pile of droppings had collected in the roof space of the church, therefore we decided that at the European Bat Night we would tidy up a little.

So on the 6/9/2003 we, Alenka Petrinjak, Boštjan Potisk and Primož Presetnik set off for Kobilje and on arrival literally dug into our work.

Before the clean up		After the clean up

In the roof space and belfry we carried out 17 big bags of droppings, around 550 litres. We estimated that these were the remains of around 20 million insects.

The droppings contain large amounts of phosphate and therefore are good as fertiliser, which the locals can confirm as they took some of the droppings.

Previously we had arranged with the Council of Kobilje to hold our speech in the fire station. The Council and Park Goričko also helped with advertising the event.

In spite of grape-harvesting and an important soccer match, around 25 mostly young locals attended the speech. After the speech they also enthusiastically took part in the observation of the bats flying over the village.

Primož Presetnik