We have bats that swoop outside our front window at this time of year. Where are they for the rest of the year?
This has brought back a startling memory. Just over 30 years ago I was in a phone box one evening calling my Mum in Cranleigh from Darwin, Australia, when a colony (had to look that up) of fruit bats/flying foxes flew over. I nearly shat myself, these were enormous beasts, about a 5 foot wingspan. Never really really liked bats.
Just about to take the dog out (he must be knackered, it's been such a beautiful day various members of the family have been taking him out on and off all day) having decided that watching Wallender after he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's is not the way I want to enter the working week. On about 3 nights this week while walking by a particular oak tree I have heard a rhythmic drilling/knocking sound, pretty loud, which I am assuming to be a woodpecker. Is that likely mate?
Yep. Almost certainly the Great Spotted Woodpecker mate. It's the most common of them all and is the one that does the rapid knocking on the trees, feeding on the insects etc under the bark. The Green Woodpecker tends to make single thuds on the bark, but not very often. Not an expert on Woodpeckers and there are a couple of others I think.
Our bats (we feel like they're ours because we think they live in the cypress tree in our front garden) are so soothing to watch. Best I've seen is three at one time - better entertainment than most TV.
We had a weekend away a few years ago where we went to Stonehenge, Bath and finished up at Longleat safari on the return journey. They have a bat cave there where you can go in, it's pitch black and hundreds of fruit bats fly about you but not one of them will touch you. It's an incredible experience. https://www.longleat.co.uk/explore/adventure-park/the-bat-cave
Not on that occasion they didn't, I think. John Lewis may have sponsored the bats. Never knowingly undersoiled. You can feel them flapping all around you, sometimes hundreds of them but they still don't touch you. They have an incredible inbuilt radar, it's better than going to Vegas or even to a QPR game.
My wife woke up one night and in the dim light saw a bat hanging from the bed surround thing overhead, screamed, I had to run down in my jocks to get a pond net, she was hiding in the loo, when I came up he/she was circling frantically around the light bulb, looking large, I managed to catch it in the net and to my surprise it was tinier than the tiniest mouse, I went down and released it into the night. A couple of nights later something woke me up, a padding sound, I listened for a while and realised it was coming from behind the wardrobe, I shone a torch behind and saw possibly the same bat inching his way up the narrow space between wardrobe and wall, back out to get the net and ready myself for his inevitable lift off, caught him as he launched himself from the top of the wardrobe, released him outside, and was never bothered by him again.
