Monday 11 December 2017

More Wildlife at Willunga: Micro-Bat.....

Well, we arrived home early last evening after being at a birthday party....and I was stone cold sober as I am the driver these days and had been on aqua pura all evening ..... and here we had a micro bat flitting around our rooms..... We have no idea how they get into the house except perhaps by the brick half circular wall which goes up to a high ceiling and may not be perfectly sealed. How to get them out is always a problem so we are inclined to let him fly about and hopefully find it in the morning hanging behind a curtain somewhere.
 Only this morning when I got up early, I found him next to Brian's chair and I thought it was dead. But when I went to push a piece of sturdy paper under it, I noticed it was moving its head. So I got my gloves and carted it out, grabbing my camera on the way. It isn't easy manoeuvring a camera trying to get the right focus while holding a bat. So the gloved hand photo is out of focus but I thought it would give you the idea of how small the bats are. On the left you can see his delicate little feet and some of the cobwebs (shame on me) it collected up high in the ceiling.
 The other exciting bit of news is that we have some visiting Kookaburras. They were flying through on Sunday morning but yesterday they inspected our pond and studied the waterlilies in great detail. There are some goldfish left still under neath them as the White faced Heron has not got them all yet....and when I was removing the scum off one end of the pond, low and behold... froglets and tadpoles so the scum has been left for them...
I was able to get this photo through the music room window.
 On the right is our new ( or is it my) acquisition.
In a moment of madness I accepted a friend's offer of what she calls, her Trevi Fountain. She has sold up and is moving closer to Adelaide and the fountain was not suitable for the new place.
It really is not suitable for ours either as we have what I fondly call a "Wild Garden" meaning things get done in there when they get done and litter of the Lemon scented Gum lies about till it gets too much and we rake it up and mulch it. Since we have a friend who helps us each week
with all the heavy work and is extremely good at trimming things that look decidedly out of control, he also helped bring the fountain from Pt Willunga over to here and assembled it beautifully. In the end though, he did have to have one of his willing sons come over to lift the main structure on its pedestal as that was beyond me altogether. It won't be a fountain of course as it would take masses of water and so it has succulents in its basins instead.
By the way, I put the little micro bat in the open shed on some bark...I have also bought a Micro-Bat Box which will be installed soon....