Friday 21 September 2012

A bat and a bird

Sorry, I have been a bit inert in the moths department on account of busy-ness and dodgy weather. But the rest of the natural world has carried on as normal. Red in tooth and claw, they say, which is true. It is also true that an animal's life is hazardous and usually short.


I hope that this bat which came down our chimney survives. It somehow avoided the gas fire and crash-landed on the hearth. We gingerly scooped it up in a pond net, to its annoyance, and took it outside on which it flew off, although not altogether normally.  Last time we found ourselves in charge of a bat was many years ago. We rang the local bat hospital in Otley, whose staff came round and spent all evening with us, only leaving when they detected a passing bat of the same species and released the one which had flown into one of our boys' bedrooms.  I think they liked Penny's tea and ginger cake.


There was no doubt about the fate of this thrush, sadly. It flew into a window pane and that was it.  I reckon we lose about half a dozen birds a year in this way - by far the most spectacular being a sparrowhawk which hit our sitting room window in July 2009 with such a thump that its claws, legs and part of its body left a ghostly outline on the glass. You can read about that here.


Isn't the thrush's plumage lovely?  What a sad waste.

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