Wildlife Memories

Today I received three early birthday cards (it's actually on Saturday and I'll be 68) and that started me thinking about early memories of wildlife.  I've also realised that what they say about memory as you get older is true.  I can remember with great clarity events of my youth yet can't always remember what I had to eat yesterday.
One the of problems with memories of childhood is deciding whether it is an actual memory or one you have created from stories told later in life.  What I think is one of my earliest memories may be just that or I could have created it from a story of my mother's combined with events or pictures I've seen later.  Anyway it is a real event that happened when I lived in Devon in a big house where my mother was a cook/housekeeper.  There was a long drive with pillars at the entrance and these pillars were used by an owl to watch for likely prey.  The owl would fly from one to the other until it spotted a meal when it would swoop and fly up into a nearby tree.  Later it would return to the pillars and continue it's patrol.
My saddest memory of my time at this house was when some house martins and their nests were removed from the gutterings and just discarded.  I was so upset and tried to rescue some of them but the fall they had been subjected to was too great.  The only good thing was that it was after their young had fledged.
The most disturbing memory was turning to go up a staircase in the house and being confronted by a large (well I was small so it probably looked larger) bat.  I screamed and my mother naturally came running.  She removed the bat on a shovel and took it into a field nearby where she left it close to a tree and when she checked later it had gone.  However, the unfortunate after effect of this is that I have had a phobia about bats since then.  I cannot look at them on TV or in pictures and to see one in real life leaves me with jelly for legs and a gibbering idiot.  Strangely enough moths have the same effect but do not know why though my mother always said their wing movements were similar.  I have no problem with butterflies which I love to watch.


Well I think that's probably too much for one blog.  I may come back later with more reminiscences.