Wildlife in the library

My longsuffering colleague just found a beautiful moth on the floor, which I've just released back into the wild. This isn't the first time wildlife has found its way into the library. We do our fair share of fairly run-of-the-mill (but still quite scary!) evictions - wasps, bees, flies and spiders. Slightly more unusual are the pigeons. At least once or twice a year the library staff here can be found coo-ing, shoo-ing and running around flapping papers, brooms, feather dusters and other bird scaring paraphernalia in an attempt to encourage stray pigeons to leave. A student once offered to bring in her father's pet falcon to dispose of a particularly persistent pigeon - thankfully the pigeon found his own way out soon after! On another occasion I came in on a Saturday morning to discover an amazing dragonfly, measuring about 10cm long, and shimmering blue and green, at the enquiry desk. I have also seen plenty of wildlife from my office window - a heron on a rooftop at my eye-level, just a few metres away across the passage; skeins of geese, teams of ducks (nouns of assemblage are wonderful things!); a swallow, which sat for a good half an hour on the open office window; a robin singing on the window ledge. This year I've had the pleasure of watching a juvenile magpie get to grips with flying, using the rooftops of the college as runways and launchpads. And then there is the daily chorus of blackbirds, each keenly defending their territory at the top of their voice. Wildlife is everywhere, even in libraries...