Here in South East Scotland we have not had such extreme heat problems as elsewhere in the UK, the drought conditions have been helped by the occasional downpour, and the fact that in a sparsely-populated county like ours there is little chance at present of the imposition of a hosepipe ban. The World Cup required me to watch (or listen to) live matches at strange times like 1am, usually in pretty warm conditions up in the attic, so I beebled about in a state of constant jet-lag for a while.
Nature took the opportunity to muscle in as well; Brian the Roof Man was here about 2 weeks ago to fix some broken slates, and repair some cracks in the harling (that's probably pebbledash to you?), and he was chased off the premises by clouds of wasps. Stephen the Wasp Man arrived a day later and exterminated 5 separate nests from our roof. Sadly, he had to come back because he'd missed one, so chalk up 6. Five had been a record, but it didn't last long.
Never experienced wasps in such numbers. Stephen tells some good tales of his work, complete with the necessary tingle of Gothic awfulness. Apparently wasp behaviour has changed a bit in Scotland in recent years; changes in the climate mean that we now get some species which used to be unknown here. One of the significant incomers is a small (but persistent) German strain, which is quite happy to build a nest right next to an existing live nest, a practice which was generally verboten previously.
Since the heat has diminished a bit, waking and eating times have settled down and we are disposing of relatively few walking wounded in the wasp department, so the evenings are much more acceptable now. I've even got back to trying to do some reading, and a little music practice.
Anyway, I was reading in bed last night (Richard Feynman - laugh if you will); at about midnight the Miles Davis album I was listening to (Milestones) ended and I was puzzled to hear a rustling noise. Maybe it was from the curtains - I wasn't sure - maybe I had imagined it, or it was just the timber roof cooling down. I carried on reading for about another 10 minutes and then a bat flew across the room and settled on the wall above the door. I wasn't terrified (of course), but past instances of this sort of thing have usually banished sleep until further notice. You have to try to avoid thinking in terms of having a room that you can't use any more...
What to do? I reasoned that if I turned out the room light and opened the Velux roof light then a sensible bat would just fly out without thinking twice. So that's what I did. It worked, but there were a couple of panic breaks when the thing started to fly round and round in the limited space - they are very fast, extremely ugly, totally silent. They will not bump into you (or they shouldn't), but these circuits of the room bring on moments of mindless terror. Oh yes, and they bump repeatedly into mirrors, glazed pictures, the TV screen - just saying.
I got the window open (in near-darkness) and Batty sat on the frame for a moment - I nudged him with my wasp-basher and he flew outside - window was closed without further incident. Pulse returned to normal levels some time afterwards. I have no idea how it got in - maybe it flew in somewhere else and made its way to the top of the house; maybe it came in when the window was open on a hot day and has been sleeping there ever since. I don't like this last idea much, especially since that means there will be messy evidence somewhere.
As far as I can see this morning everything seems clean and tidy, and satisfactorily bat-proof, so I have to assume it visited only briefly. I'm sure it was more scared than I was, in which case it was pretty scared. Thinking about it, we have had a number of bat episodes over the years, but I think the last time we had one in that particular attic room must have been around 2001. I was a lot braver and faster in those days, but I do remember it surprisingly clearly.
Seem to have a few more wasps around up here in the far north too, not had a nest since a few years, fingers crossed, but there does seem to be a lot about. Well done in getting the bat out without too much grief for both you and your friend!! I see the odd one when out and about on my night time walk with the dog although she is now of an age where a wee daunder out the back is more preferable!!
ReplyDeleteI have to say that I too am well into my wee daunder phase now!
DeleteWasp Man Stephen reckons that people who don't have wasps' nests this year just haven't seen them. If we find that our lofts are infested with pipistrelles then Stephen cannot help, since they are protected...
Love seeing bats... we have some regulars on our evening dog walk in our local park here in London. One of my dogs (a lurcher) has made a couple of attempts to snatch them out of the air by leaping 6' straight up but luckily has missed every time!
ReplyDeleteThey are odd creatures (bats, not lurchers) - when we first extended our house (20 years ago now), the upstairs bathroom had a new Velux skylight, and when it was getting dusk you could see the bats skimming just over the skylight, which was exciting (it was often the highlight of my youngest son's bath - he was only 2 at the time...). Twenty years later, you will not see a bat anywhere near our roof - what happened? did they get bored? is there something wrong with our roof? How do they know? Facebat?
DeleteI like wildlife but I do like it to stay out of the house, I don't envy you the wasps but down here seeing a bat would be treat, albeit the wife might not agree.
ReplyDeleteI believe the world needs wasps, though I can't remember why, nor do I understand why it needs quite so many.
DeleteBats - hmmm - I like them, in the sense that it is good that they are somewhere around, but I don't go into their house, so I'd appreciate some sort of bilateral agreement on this.
No wasps this year ( we had a nest in a wall cavity, attracted by grapes on the vine) but plagues of flies - it seems a common occurrence in England and a colleague in Northern Ireland reported the same. Some people are really badly effected it seems; we have had more than normal, at worst maybe 10 buzzing about.
ReplyDeleteNo bats but the cat used to bring in the odd bird or mouse that was still alive....
Neil
Haven't seen any extraordinary quantities of flies, that I can recall - will keep an eye open. We have two plagues a year of tiny cluster flies, which come out of the woods behind our house when they become adults (in their larval form they have a parasitic life inside earthworms - sorry if you were enjoying an Eccles cake there) and then later when they hibernate.
DeleteStrangely, their swarming repeatedly affects only the same room upstairs (the room nearest the woods), but they really make a mess. Stephen the Wasp Man says the only way to get rid of these is to wash their hibernating areas with strong pine disinfectant, since it overpowers the pheromones they home in on. We have tried this every year, and it hasn't worked yet - mind you, it might have been even worse if we hadn't. Cluster flies can also pass through locked, weather-tight windows without problems.
The Memsahib, the bravest person I know, had a reasonably large eight legged friend run across her face recently. Her sound was something I never wish to hear again.
ReplyDeleteRespects to the Memsahib - outrageous behaviour. This reminds me that not so long ago we had a discussion on this blog about ladies who were convinced that spiders would try to get into their mouths if they snored. This is all unnecessarily unfair - Nature torments us sometimes.
DeleteYou also remind me that we usually have a goodly number of big spiders here in the Summer, and there have been really very few [there you go - I shouldn't have said that...]
I wonder if the wasps have been killing the spiders?
We have a thing hanging up in the garage, it s a sort of cotton puffed up bag with some camo pattern on the outside - the idea is that it looks like a wasps nest to other wasps, so they stay away.
ReplyDeleteI can't say for sure that it works ..... but we haven'y had any wasps in there for 3 years., though it sounds like your German wasps might quite like it! :-)
Ah yes - the Waspinator - I remember being very impressed with ours when it arrived, and it did seem to work. We had two of them - the first one rotted away in time, and the second one didn't seem to work so well - perhaps the wasps had spread the word. Also, I think the second one went mouldy.
Deletehttps://prometheusinaspic.blogspot.com/2015/07/hooptedoodle-181-another-gizmo.html
Sad really - as with everything else, we moved on, and the good ideas went out with the bad ones.
I don't like wasps. Living in Michigan, I had a paper wasp nest professionally removed from the porch and, rather less professionally, removed one from within a birdfeeder. And thought I was done. Then I had the (fake) shutters replaced; behind every one, multiple black nests. The house looked as though it suffered a particularly grim type of acne.
ReplyDeleteI do like bats. Trying to catch them is pointless - echo-location beats human reflexes virtually every time. When they get in, I usually let them roost.... they like curtains. When asleep, easy to scoop up in a towel and put outside.
Enjoy the Feynman; I don't understand the Physics, but he wrote very funny stuff.
Hi Ivan - good to hear from you. Our wasps have changed in a number of ways in recent years. UK problems are a bit wimpy anyway, since our pests are not really trying. Biggest change is just the quantity - as part of the General Entropy pressure to convert all farmland back to wilderness as quickly as possible, something feels a bit out of control.
DeleteWe see very few bats now, but they are obviously around. There are a number of derelict barns here, and a ruined mansion of some size, and they must have plenty of bats there. Anyone with bat problems here has to lump it, since the things are legally protected. Also the nests of house martins and swallows protected in UK since 1981 - the countryside is not as tidy as it used to be.