Bat Ballet

Our summer kitchen

Warm summer nights are perfect here in Gers. To make the most of them we regularly spend the evenings in our garden watching the sun go down. Recently – perhaps because of the especially warm weather we’ve been enjoying- we’ve been provided with added entertainment as bats swoop, dive and pirouette all around us on their hunt for insects.

We’ve discovered that they are roosting in the roof of our summer kitchen and as evening falls and the light fades, we can hear them waking up and making their way to the edge of the roof ready for take-off. At first, we thought the scratching noises we could hear above our heads were made by birds landing on the roof but we’re now certain that we are in fact the proud hosts of at least one bat colony. As launch time gets underway there are twenty, if not fifty that take off out of the roof and into the night.

To watch them dance through the garden is joyful. Silent, fast and nimble, they are reducing the number of mosquitoes and flies in our garden – so we are very glad to see them and we like the thought that we are a chambre d’hôtes, not just for people but also for bats!