Pictures of a flying bat
Wow, I guess this only happens to you once in a lifetime. I managed to take a few photos of a flying bat in the attic of our house.
I went to the attic yesterday to put the washing on the line when suddenly a small bat circled around me. It was late afternoon, so the poor animal was there at least for the whole day and didn't find a way out. Even worse, the temperature is around 50-60°C during summer days like these, it must have been parched.
Opening the windows didn't help because they couldn't be opened completely, and it didn't find the port. Anyway, I quickly went back to the appartment, took the camera, went back to the attic and took a lot of pictures -- at least I tried to. The bat was too shy to let me take a close picture where it sat down, and it kept flying around me most of the time anyway. So I tried getting it on a photo while it was flying around. I've taken at least two dozen pictures but I only catched it a few times, and only three photos were usable in the end though still blurry.
I couldn't take more pictures because I had to get it out of the attic before it got a heart attack and before I died of thirst. I removed two windows from the frames and the bat finally found its way out. No idea if it was more an adventure for me or the bat.
I wasn't much suprised to find the bat in the house because we have an old smokestack in the backyard where they live and we see them every evening lapping through the gardens. Neighbours told me that they even had one in their daughter's bedroom a few years ago. There are even more in the castle which is less than a kilometer away. But it's still exciting because getting a picture of a bat flying around you is almost impossible (Chuck, Nuno, do you remember my attempts in Lissabon?), and watching it from closer than a meter too.
