The unwelcome guests ....

The sheer diversity of people that stay here demonstrates what a welcoming and inclusive place High Wray is. But sometimes we get a guest that we just wish hadn’t come in the first place and that we can’t wait to get out of the door.

Well, that doesn’t sound very ‘rangery’ does it? But when the guest in question is a bird that files in through our door and gets stuck in the kitchen we hope you’d agree with us. It doesn’t happen too often, but when it does we’re normally alerted by the tapping and flapping sound of the panicking bird desperately trying to batter it’s way out of our windows. This is upsetting for both the bird and us so we try to get it out as quickly as possible.  

Bird in hand

Most of the time we can leave the door open and slowly ‘herd’ the bird towards it, but this doesn’t always work so sometimes we need to capture it. It’s tricky, but there’s certain ways to do this that minimize the chance of harming the bird and once you have them (carefully) in your hand it’s surprising how calm they appear. 

A bird in the hand .... the Wren caught in the kitchen

Sometimes though this may be because they’re a bit dazed as with this Wren that we recently caught, which is why it’s just sat on a hand without flying off. We put this one down outside the door and it had gone 10 minutes later so we think it just needed to get it’s breath back.

The duck makes it's casual entry

It’s not just small birds though. On occasion a local duck has turned up and wandered proprietarily in for a quick look around, before exiting in its own good time. More dramatically, this summer one of our volunteer groups came in to the Acland block kitchen to find a Bullfinch hiding under the kitchen shelves, with a Sparrowhawk perched inside on the windowsill looking mighty peeved! They caught this one by throwing a towel over it and released it outside, where it flew off unharmed – certainly not something you want eyeing up your sausages in the kitchen ….

Volunteers flock in

Most of the time though, our guest are invited. Recently we played host to the Fix the Fells lengthsmen for their annual Xmas bash, an event we’ve been proud to hold here for the last five years now. Around 35 of these fantastic regular volunteers spent a couple of days working with us and the South Lakes upland path team, culminating in a Saturday night feast of fun …. and food, of course. This year the lengthsmen have once again broken all their own records on the amount of volunteering days they’ve contributed to Fix the Fells, so there was plenty to celebrate.

Very welcome guests! The lengthsmen's Xmas quiz in 'full flight'

We’re looking forward to next year now and welcoming many more guests through our doors. And while you can never be sure, we’re hopeful there won’t be any need to throw a towel over any of them!

By Rob Clarke, Basecamp Community Ranger