Earth Notes: Bats at the Hogsmill Bridge, Villiers Road, Kingston

Auto-updated 2025-11-22.
Observations of bat activity at the bridge over many years #bat #Chiroptera #dataset
This dataset is extracted from ad hoc observations at the Hogsmill River bridge on Villiers Road, Kingston-upon-Thames, UK, of bat activity. The Hogsmill is a 10km-long chalk stream that flows into the River Thames at Kingston.
England London Kingston the Hogsmill River near Villiers Road on overcast July day 4 DHD England London Kingston the Hogsmill River flowing under crossing Villiers Road bridge on a sunny May day 1 DHD England London Kingston the Hogsmill River bridge Villiers Road 2025 November 9 DHD

Introduction

It is interesting to know when bats are active in terms of times of day and temperatures (hypothesis: from ~20 minutes after sunset and ≳10°C). This set of samples extracted from the wider set of observations in Bats Around our Home aka 16WW, initially on , at that point extending back exactly five years.

Almost all of these observations are directly by Damon Hart-Davis when passing over the bridge on other business. A few are planned observations and/or by other people.

Methodology

For these Villiers Road Hogsmill Bridge observations, the sampling times are usually when Damon Hart-Davis is passing on foot, such as on the way to or from a meeting. If there is no reasonable chance at all of a sighting, eg broad daylight, no observation will be made. If not feeling like making an observation for whatever reason, then no observation will be made. Bats will be reported as seen or not seen (plus occasional heron etc) as objectively as possible, ie negative and positive results are reported fairly. Reports are not omitted post hoc if bats are not seen on an observation.

Data

The extracted Hogsmill observation data is available in machine-readable form, and is shown below in tabular form.

(The gen-bats-at-Hogsmill-bridge-dataset-inc.sh HTML creation script is available under an Apache 2.0 licence.)

Hogsmill bridge bat observation records.
Observation date-time (UTC)Sunset date-time (optional, UTC)Distinct bats seen (count)Air temp­erature (optional, °C)Comment link (optional)
114more
1more
2more
016more
1more
1more
3more
3more
1more
1017more
20more
3more
113more
010more
0more
115more
0more
09more
17more
1more
210more
1more
110more
07more
07more
06more
05more
09more
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09more
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016more
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110more
06more
311more
0more
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112more
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019more
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011more
07more
0more
0more
06more
01more
07more
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08more
0more
05more
01more
210more
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011more
07more
314more
211more
122more
115more
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112more
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015more
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Records: 81

Dataset

name
Hogsmill River Bridge at Villiers Road Kingston-upon-Thames Bat Activity
description
Bat activity at the Hogsmill River bridge over Villiers Road, Kingston-upon-Thames, London, KT1 3AR, UK
version
1
keywords
bat, Chiroptera, urban, London, England, UK, river, bridge, activity, observation
variable measured
activity
date created
2025-10-29
date published
date modified
2025-11
temporal coverage
2020-10-29/..
spatial coverage
UK centre 51.404411N,-0.294368E elevation 12m
canonical URL
this descriptive text with markup
distribution
directory of data and metadata
distribution
observation data CSV, one observation record per row, with fields: observation datetime (UTC), sunset datetime (UTC), distinct bats (count), air temperature (C), comment link (URL)
DOI
10.5281/zenodo.17478783 [hart-davis2025hogsmill]
licence
this dataset is licensed under CC0, ie it is effectively public domain; if you make use of this data, attribution is welcome but not required
is accessible for free
true
creator
Damon Hart-Davis

References