Wildlife at Bowe Barn

If you are familiar with Borrowdale, you might have noticed that we have our National Trust North Lakes offices at Bowe Barn.  This is an old, typical Lakeland stone-built building situated in an area with lots of very mature trees.  A happy coincidence of that is that some of the local wild-life makes good use of the building.

We have a breeding colony of pipistrelle bats living in the roof space above our offices at present.  Pipistrelles are one of the commonest and also the smallest bats to be found in Britain.  They are 3.5–5.2 cm long along the head-and-body, and the tail adds 2.3–3.6 cm. They weigh from 3.5 to 8.5 g and have a wingspan ranging from 18 to 25 cm.  It’s fantastic to see them but occasionally one or two find their way inside the building. The carpet of our office is a dangerous place for them to be so we have to very gently take them outdoors and put them into a crevice in the outside walls of the building!

 We also have swallows nesting and breeding with the young ones finding some handy perching places.  Right now they are at their noisiest as they sit and demand food.  We must have a very healthy insect population to support them and the bats!

Hi, It’s Daisy here.

As part of my Mountain Rescue training, I’ve been to the pub again.  This bit of the training is really tiring.