The bats are back. But were they ever away? I find all our feathered friends bewildering sometimes.
Googling “where do bats go in summer?”, I find that, not unusually for wildlife, they don’t go anywhere. And in winter they hibernate.
Well, how come I’m just seeing them now?
My guess is they’re stocking up on grub.
I noticed them not just in the back garden recently (mid-late November), but on the forest walk near the castle ruins and in the woods beside the Lonely Shore, always at dusk, which is often the earliest I get oot the hoose.
I’d reason also to wonder about our less mammalian avian friends, who deserted the garden in summer. I was vexed, I can tell you.
True, I feed them less in summer but, if they come looking, they know Uncle Rab will provide.
There are bushes and trees for them to flitter aboot in, but they must have found somewhere better.
The wee robin has gone
Admittedly, the wee robin that watches me doing my morning exercises was a fixture throughout the summer, doubtless for the entertainment value.
However, he’s disappeared now tae. True, they live short lives, and there are cats, but the comings and goings of birdies are a mystery to me, as are their deaths.
If they’re so many and live such short lives, the streets and fields should be littered with their wee bodies.
We’ve no foxes round here, or anything else much that would scoff their cadavers, so what’s going on? Have they got little hidden cemeteries somewhere?
At any rate, the garden birds are back, having returned from their summer holidays, which must be staycations as they don’t migrate. They’re supposed to be territorial so they couldn’t have gone far.
Rab and other food sources
Maybe someone nearby was feeding them pies and curries, something more interesting than my seeds and suet pellets.
At any rate, now that they’re back, I like how they – sparrows, tits, finches, blackbirds, thrush – remember me from before.
I think I’m in their ‘Official Guide to Rabs and Other Sources of Food’.
As for the bats, I guess they must have been around in summer, right enough, as I recall now a couple of times hoping they’d eat the midges.
But they’ve been a lot more conspicuous lately. Perhaps, on the light nights, they just came out later. But I usually go out to peruse the night sky all year round before turning in.
Seeing the Northern Lights
Pretty sure I told you about the time I went out one frosty November at midnight in the far north and found the whole sky a shape-shifting riot of colour: the Northern Lights. One of life’s highlights, for sure.
I like to see the bats too. Their scary reputation from childhood tales and cartoons gives them an edge.
All creatures great and small
I like the thought that they’re just missing your heid by inches because of radar, like wee aeroplanes.
All creatures great and small. It must be fab having wings.
They say birds are descended from dinosaurs, but it’s difficult to imagine Tyrannosaurus rex being so cheeky and at times full of the joys.
He’d probably keep accidentally destroying the feeder and, were he to join the morning choir, I suspect he’d be in the bass section.
