Batmen and Robin...

The Bat cave/residence!,  postcode a secret

A surprise from Mike {Batman 1} when he and Morris,  the North Cotswold caver and batman extraordinaire took me to the local Quarry 'cave' system this morning. I remained {as Robin !}  as the safety man outside whilst they conducted the bat count inside. I got my chance after the official count, to explore the inside with Morris as my guide. Hugely impressed to see the lesser horseshoe bats [~100] which looked like 'black leaves' suspended from the cotswold stone ceilings. Also one of the bats was clearly aware of the warm temperature outside and was flying around. Oddly there was also a single greater horseshoe bat happy to roost alongside its cousins. It transpires that this bat conservation project of the NT and the Bat Trust has kept Mike and Morris busy for over 8 years which included a good deal of 'building' work carried out by the two of them to shore up the cave system. A cracking effort. We finished this part of the day by examining other bat roosts in various Sherborne buildings/cellars. Small number of lesser horseshoes were spotted but come the spring these roosts will be busier as the bats from the quarry roost make their migration from the main winter roost.

Just a days work for super volunteer?

Rest of the day with Mike and previous day with Martin was on 'thinning' activities at Sherborne east belt and Dovers hill! Always difficult to predict what may happen on any given day with a ranger and this week certainly illustrated this. For example with Martin we visited Snowshill first thing where Linda the head gardener provided a couple more jobs for Martins long list i.e. planning for new drystone wall and removal of some difficult tree roots.   Added  to this was the job of cutting up a large Mulberry tree root which I and L &L {Linda and Lisa assistant gardener} had dug out over the last 2 days.

Having done this martin & I  moved onto Dovers hill where some early 'olympicks' preparation was done to allow the audience increased viewing for these original local games! More conventional thinning took place in lynch wood where in  particular a very accurate tree felling was carried out by Martin. With buckets of skill and little room for error she fell without damaging any of the trees in the fall line. I would have awarded Martin the gold but Mike just pipped him with an even finer { even less margin for error} tree felling feat in the east belt today. Either way M&M certainly make tree felling look easy {it isn't!} but of course the real work falls to me in stacking and clearing up the tons of wood all ready for blocking, splitting and selling!.