Scary event

I'd prefer owls to bats

I can assure you the owls that nest in the walls of the house are incredibly noisy, espcially when the fledglings are there. The chatter away to each other, move round and scratch and when they clean they kick all the pellets out of the nest all over the front doorstep.

I was at home alone one night when the fledglings started flying. The fledglings were making a short (couple of metres) flight from 'nest' to my bedroom windowsill. All the time the mother was giving a constant stream of instruction sand worries (you know what we mothers are like) and getting a constant chatter back from the fledging (look Mummy I am on my own, aren't I clever!) etc

In the end the noise was so great I had to decamp to another room the other side of the house to get some sleep.

You are so lucky to have owls (although that’s easy for me to say - I don’t have to listen to them!). We have starlings who nest in our soffits in the spring. They make a terrible racket running up and down! Glad you got to the bottom of it.

Wow, I love owls, I think knowing that is what they were would have relaxed me too. Sounds like you have a lovely holiday home to go to.

Cohabiting birds and other wildlife in the attic/loft sounds very nice and eco friendly - if they were all house trained!

Yes, once you know the cause, it is very relaxing. I think the real problem is that the noise woke me when I was heavily asleep and when you have just woken and are still very groggy, noises and sounds like this can seem far more frightening than if they had happened when was I was up and awake and could realise that the sound was coming from the ceiling not the floor and able to see that there is no animal in the room.

We have starlings nesting in our loft every year. They get in through a small gap under the eaves. We don’t mind them at all, but sometimes they sound like little elves tap-dancing up there

I'm glad you've got to the root of the mystery, Monica! Sleep well tonight.

Hello there are sometimes things in life that are totally unexplainable and you will never ever found out why. 10 days after my father passed away I was walking along Rye Lane in Peckham when a man stepped out of Rye Lane market, smiled at my sister and I who were stood approximately 6 feet away. He turned and disappear into the pedestrians passing by. It one of only 4 times in my life when for several seconds I was paralysed. So it was a few seconds before I pursued him but he had dissapeard. Tommy

@M0nica - I had a rat in the roof space of my previous house - but it only moved around when the house was extremely quiet. Was very scary the first time that I heard it (shock). Managed to investigate for the source of entry - which turned out to be a 'missing brick' in the external gas meter cupboard - so much for living in a 'new build' property (hmm).

In this flat, I was woken one afternoon - while napping - by a very loud THUD! Turned out to be a squirrel that had infiltrated from an overhanging tree in next-door's garden. That was around 5yrs ago - but nothing since then.

Do you have any bushes planted near the house, or rambler roses or creepers up against the house? Twigs being blown against the house by even a mild wind can sound exactly like little feet running across the floor.

I'm glad you solved it!

Thank you every one for your suggestions. I thought the noise was too heavy for birds I so wouldn't otherwise have thought of them as an explanation.

Problem solved! DH and I went up to the loft, actually I should call it an attic, it is accessed by a staircase, we clearly have birds roosting in the roof, including an owl, which has deposited its pellets there. I would imagine that the owl was responsible for the footsteps I heard. There is an area of open floor just over the bedroom I was sleeping in.

There are a lot of owls in our area of Normandy, they nest in outhouses and also in three holes in the wall of the house, just over the front door, I think the holes were put in as a minute dovecot when the house was built.

We have had other birds as well, as I have whirlygig clothes liner there where we leave washing on the line when we come home. The supports and the floor underneath are white with droppings.

This is a new problem as we have never had birds roosting on the dryer before. I will probably need to get an old sheet or curtain to spread over the top of the dryer when we leave washing there to save having to rewash every thing on our return.

We know how they get in. In our part of Normandy the area where the roof overhangs the walls is left open. In the UK we fill that space with barge boards. We could wire it, but it wouldn't be easy and there is so much of it.

Still all I wanted was an explanation for the footsteps and that I now have.

Monica, it could be a loir, edible doormouse. They can be very noisy. We get them occasionally, and the have been known to roll walnuts up and down the roof in the middle night!

We live in the country and rats and mice get in the wall cavity . You can hear then rolling bits of brick around and making scrapping noises . If you still hear the noise after putting the fat poison down , you may have a presence in your home .

We've stayed in a wooden pole house and got woken to loud gnawing sounds. I thought the house could collapse if they managed to gnaw right through!
Probably those possums beloved of Dame Edna.

Could be ghosts? We had them in a house we used to live in, just in my Sons bedroom. I found out later it was two children who'd died in a fire in the house years earlier. They were harmless, just playing.

Our friends have a holiday home in France and this summer they had pine martens in the loft; be careful as they can do some damage with their chewing.

Do you have skirting boards on the walls, Monica?

I was trying to get to sleep one night, when scratching started very close to my head. I traced it to the skirting board just below me. It continued on and off for a while, then stopped, and I never heard anything in that spot again. (Took me a long time to get to sleep after that!)

In theory, there shouldn't be any gap behind that board or within that internal wall in our house, but other pest problems over the years (in the loft above) have proved to my satisfaction that there must be, as scratching and grinding sounds in the loft above one night were accompanied by the sound of whatever was being gnawed at falling downwards within that wall. Our pest control guy couldnt see how that could possibly happen, but it did, for several days running.

Anyway, my point is that rodents can get into supposedly impossible places, and yours might have done the same. If there is skirting, could it have been a small rodent behind it, possibly with enough space to run along behind it too?

Yes, sorry MOnica we have a stone house and had a pine marten. This was a few years ago though and never had a recurrence.

I hate to mention the words, but what part of France are you in? We stayed at a friends old farmhouse near Limoges and were woken by scratchy noises. In the morning there was wood dust on the bed. Death Watch Beetle! They are surprisingly noisy for such little beasts.

Hopefully it just proves to be blackbirds sorting out the debris in the gutters.

We have very noisy bats here. I was convinced that there were rats or mice around with all the scratching sounds until we found them. Of course, they're protected and we don't mind them.

One summer night I was sat up in bed, I suffer from seasonal asthma, so was sitting up in the dark, when something literally flew into my face! After a lot of screaming we discovered it was a bat, I don’t know who was more scared!

M0nica, hope you had a quiet night and a good night's sleep.