Last night I visited the outbuilding that adjoins the office to put the recycling materials in the collection box. Whilst I was doing that a bat swooped in, looped round just above my head and flew to the top corner at the back. I moved quietly forward to get a closer look and it had roosted by a rafter. I went back to the house and grabbed my camera. Thinking that the bat might be gone by the time I returned a minute later, I was pleasantly surprised to see it still there.

Bats are often seen flying around the barns and I had tried and failed to take photos of before. This was the first time I had had a chance to photograph a roosting bat. It looks like this area is being used as a feeding site. There are a few large spiders webs at various points underneath where the bat had roosted. These had plently of insect remains and droppings.

I am a novice when it comes to identifying bats. However after doing some research I worked out the bat was most likely to be a Pipistrelle. The droppings were a good help with identification after I gleened as much as I could from the photo of the bat.

The other photos I took of the bat were slightly blurred, so I didn’t upload those. After spending another minute in the corner, the bat then crawled through a very small gap at the top of the wooden dividing partition into the store. It spent a few minutes in there before scrabbling back outside. A few minutes later after the lights were switched off it flew out, presumably to find another tasty moth. This was a wonderful thing to see.