Welcome to family, friends and visitors. Here you will find interesting (hopefully) pictures of my part of the world, news of our household and probably, long ramblings about anything that catches my interest.

Thursday 22 July 2010

A Wildlife Day.

It's been a day of some sun mixed with very heavy showers. During one of the sunny spells I had a good go at the hanging baskets, all the recent heavy rain had prevented me from daily dead heading of the surfinias and the flowers had also had a good battering as well. When I finished my hands were sticky so I turned the tap on to wash my hands. I looked down to see something fluttering in the plug hole. My first thought was that it was a leaf that had dropped from my arm, then it was 'Euch' as I thought a small brown frog was in the sink. Only then did I realise that it was a tiny bat which had somehow fallen into the sink and down the plug hole. I carefully scooped it onto a tea towel and took it outside to see what the situation was.
At this point I was pretty sure that it was dead, I mean it doesn't look good does it? The sun went in at this point and it started to get cold again so I put the bat in a container in the spare room. After an hour there were some signs of life but when I put the bat in my hand it felt pretty cold. Bat and box were put in the warm airing cupboard and after another hour or so there was a definite improvement.

The sun had made a reappearance and it was hot outside so out went bat, camera and myself to bask in the heat.

After a little crawling around and a few yawns to boost the oxygen,


the little pipistrelle bat spread its wings and flew off. Hooray! A happy ending.


Having posted many pictures of Lundy I thought I would finish with a few more of the wildlife. These small birds, linnets? would sing loudly from a bush only a few feet away.

There were a couples of ponies and foals in a field near us but this small herd roamed free over the rest of the island.

Soay sheep, one of many types of animals introduced by a previous owner of Lundy.

I think the wild goats were a much earlier introduction. There was one cream coloured ram with a magnificent spread of horns at least 3ft across that I saw several times.
And that's the end of Lundy folks, at least until we go there again.

1 comment:

happyone said...

Those are some incredible pictures of the bat. I'm glad it ended up flying away.
I think I would have been afraid of it though.