Bat in Barn

Nature is slowly retreating, the lush greens of spring and summer are gradually replaced by the ambers of autumn. Mists in the morning reluctantly make way for the sun and when it is there it still warms the day as if it was summer but in the evening the cool sets in quickly and the mists are back to roam the nocturnal lands.

In the dying hours of the day bats take it to the skies to feed on insects that, like them, shy away from the daylight. Once more they their rounds in the enveloping twilight, but their prey has become less abundant and the time has come for them to wrap up for the winter.

Soon the storms will be out, shaking off the last leaves of summer. The rains from the Atlantic will swipe across the mountains and for the bats to find a dry and sheltered place to hibernate for the winter is essential to make it into the new year.P1010773 crop

One of them found what it thought to be ‘the perfect place for the winter’ and managed to get into the Barn only to find himself lost as this barn is now occupied by human guests. A close encounter with nature in a sleepless night for bat and man.

The next day we found batman on one of the beds and took him out into the woodshed. We left him there, somewhere high and dry.

“You may stay there for the winter, little man.”

That evening he was gone, taking it to the skies again, flying over nocturnal lands, finding himself a place somewhere…