Most people seem to do all that they can to get rid of wildlife when they move to Italy ! Well done for thinking about how to encourage them.

Dormice, when they are not living in your bedroom are lovely little creatures and very interesting to observe.They seem to like to make stores of fruits and nuts to see themselves through the winter so if you can provide somewhere for them to do that?

I'm not sure if bats co-habit with dormice? You will need only very small gaps to allow bats in and out.

You might also consider putting up some Barn Owl nest boxes as they may well have to be evicted from your house once rennovations start? Owls eat lots of rats and mice ( oh dear some dormice too I fear) so its great to have as many as possible.

Good luck with it all!

I was standing outside my garage (no door yet)  at dusk a couple of weeks ago and a bat flew out and off. I was quite excited that I might have bats in the beams but never saw any again.

Mind you after reading Gromits post maybe it isn't such a 'bat' thing after all!

Don´t worry, the bats will come back. I may also be a bit crazy but I love all this wildlife around me.... with the exception of scorpions. I think that we can all live happily together

boxes for bats would be the way to go and dormice too.I have not known them to be destructive but in the winter they will shred up textiles / paper etc to make nests so a nestbox full of shredded paper or wool may deter them from doing this!

Dormice spend most nights outside the building and sleep there only during the day so apart from the nesting and fruit storage they should not give you too hard a time!

Many thanks to you all. I've already downloaded the information and will be trying various bat/owl/dormice and different size bird boxes but not until next year unfortunately. Hope to come back to you and let you know how successful it was

last year I began a new adventure house managing a friend's house in Garfagnana, right up in the sticks.

In just one summer season I learned how to remove an unwelcome hive of 30,000 bees in the bedroom window, remove unwelcome scorpions who are experts at finging death but when you go to pick them up, they are very much alive! I learned to live with vipers and bats in the belfry, ENORMOUS spiders and beetles but best of all, i had the priviledge of seeing little deer shyly nibbling the cherries off the trees at dawn. long live Garfagnana.

you can take a look at my friends house on my web site under casa rosmarino on www.poppies.uk.net

or on www.poppies.it

I recently discovered droppings outside one of our bedroom windows in our top floor apartment in Rom city centre.  We called the pest control and the man advised us that it was bats.  I originally thought mice.  We now have a nice pile of droppings on the terrace every morning which have to be removed.

I am torn between trying to remove them and knowing that they actually eat other pests.  Any advice would be welcome as I am at a loss what to do.  We go on holiday for a few weeks in August and I hate to think the pile of droppings when we get back?

Thanks