Readers of a sensitive or nervous disposition may need to look away now!  Our derelict and nearly sold - it's just waiting for completion - building is not merely home to both birds and bats but they (at least the birds, the bats are 'not proven') have the audacity to breed there.  I mean, breeding in a church - shocking!  As a result of this, the buyer has to evict them - and provide temporary housing for the bats (how sweet) before the breeding season gets underway if he is to achieve the required timeframe for housing association housing on the site (are you keeping up?!).  What this means is:

• taking tiles off the roof so that the bats think 'this is not a nice place to bring up a family' and leave in disgust
• building a temporary bat house - which needs official planning consent (!)
• covering up the crevices and eaves where the birds nest

There seems a bit of a tension between bird and bat preferences here - and I'm a little confused as to why the bats can't leave via one of the numerous broken windows or why the birds won't suddenly decide to nest inside the building having flown in and sussed it out.  Failure to do this now means a delay of about six months until all the baby birdies have grown up and flown and any baby bats have learned that this is not a nice place to hang out anymore before the builder can put up much needed low cost housing.  As Terry Wogan would say 'is it me?'

So, scaffolders and green netting due to arrive on site in the next day or so...