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applestar
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Bat house advice?

I've been looking around for a bat house. So many choices out there, most of them in the $60~$70 range -- I'm getting sticker :shock:
There are also kits and blueprints. Some kits as low as $20, but I do believe in the old axiom: "you get what you pay for." :roll:

I found this website out of Pennsylvania: https://www.batmanagement.com/Ordering/batboxes/bathouseshootout.html

They have another page: https://www.batmanagement.com/Batcentral/batboxes/whyfail.html

Their whole website seem pretty thorough. I guess I would consider the $54 kit.

These are REALLY expensive! https://www.batcatalog.com/Scripts/prodView.asp?idProduct=323

Any thoughts? Advice? I believe here in NJ we have big and small brown bats. Thanks! :D

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hendi_alex
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I've have tried bat houses twice. Never a single resident to my knowledge. I had a bat stay in my unused fireplace one time. And I've had them get under the roof of the barn a time or two. I placed the bathouse on the north side of the bard about 15 feet off of the ground up near the peak of the roof. The paper wasps liked the house but that was it. If you have a local chapter of bat conservancy if they have such, or perhaps communicate with bat conservancy national. Perhaps they have some information that would relate to your specific area. Some species of bats will use bat houses, but would be ashame to waste the money effort, if those in your area are not bat house nesters.

I bet if you contact this New Jersey program they would be willing and able to supply you with what information is available on New Jersey bats and their roosting habits.

https://www.njfishandwildlife.com/ensp/batcount.htm
Last edited by hendi_alex on Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Chowmom
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Can only add that I have a fairly large zoo near me. They've never had bats use any of their bat houses either. (Doesn't stop them from selling the houses in their gift shop though!) Also have had two friends have bats take up residence in their attics. Very messy and $$$ to remedy. If you do decide to go with the houses you may want to think about locating them as far away from your house as you can.

TheLorax
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The kits aren't practical. Waste of your $20.

The three Chamber Bat House is really expensive because it is designed properly and if installed properly... it could actually attract bats. The one issue with that particular bat house is the color of paint used. You'd want to repaint it a medium gray for where you garden. Bat houses are really incubators for their young and interior temps need to be just right.

The three chamber bat house could be made yourself for around $75 and that would include the cost of paint and hardware cloth for the interior so the babies could move around easier. You can also use a dremel tool to create notches/gouges for them to cling to within their home.

There's a bunch of basic information in this thread-
https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7905&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=75

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applestar
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Waste of your $20.
Yeah, I though as much. :roll:

I guess I'll go for the BCM 3-Chamber Bat House Kit. Medium Grey huh? OK, thanks! Actually that will work well since my house is "colonial blue".

It recently occurred to me, but do you end up with a pile of bat guano underneath? If it's on the side of the house, do you end up with the siding streaked with it? The original location I had in mind is over the patio, so even if I put it all the way at the end, it's still over the end of the patio.... 2nd choice location is NE side of the house over vegetation -- but it faces the street... I don't think it gets enough sun either. Complications complications... :?

TheLorax
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If your home is colonial blue, you can use the same paint and add white to it until you reach a lighter colonial blue. Down south you'd almost want to go with a very pale colonial blue and up north you'd want to go with a dark colonial blue similar to the tone of charcoal gray the bat house in the ad was painted. You're in NJ so medium is perfect. Most people paint their bat house to coordinate with their homes. I've seen ivory, sand, and brown and I've seen all ranges of colors but they're always light, medium, or dark to reflect or absorb. It's all about getting the temps up or down depending on where you garden.

The NE eaves of your home would not be ideal. You want a southern exposure.

Oh yes, you will get guano. That's the reward you get for offering habitat to them! You will not end up with streaked siding. Once you see the design, you'll see that the bat poops go straight down to the ground. You could even place a little catch basin there if you'd like. Those long window box planters work great. I think mine is about 3' long by about 10" and that seems to work perfectly fine. So much for using it as a planter ever again. You can add the guano to your composter or work it into the top layers of soil around plants. It's excellent fertilizer, one of nature's finest.

One thing, use untreated lumber. I used oak when we built ours. That's why the price to build was $75 a piece. Not comfortable with cedar or pine for babies.

TheLorax
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Oh oh oh! Don't buy those plans! Hold off spending money. I've got them for that exact bathouse you're looking at. Send me your e-mail address privately and I will forward the plans to you along with photographs of the interior space and completed bathouses and also a photograph of mine mounted. You don't need to spend any money! I've got the plans!

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applestar
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Thanks Lorax! I PM'd you. :wink:

TheLorax
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I have sent the blueprints to you as well as photos.

Little information on the design-
The open area you will see at the top in some of the photos is to enable them to move freely from cell to cell within the incubator. This also allows for better ventilation. The notches were added for a reason. In addition to the notches, we also used a dremel tool and made a few horizontal gouges. V gouges work well enough too but don't let your daughter use a V gouge as they take strength and many people pull the tool toward them as opposed to using the tool away from them. Lots of injuries to little ones using V gouges. We've since modified our design and have begun to attach hardware cloth. Kids can't end up with a V gouge in their abdomen using hardware cloth. There was a method to the madness in that the little bats could get a foothold to move around inside. If we are making a bat house, we really need to use wood that is not treated to avoid birth defects. We previously used untreated oak for the outer and on the inside we used untreated rough sawn cedar however because of concerns with cedar, we have now been using rough sawn oak for the interior too. We chose not to stain the wood which would require re-staining every 5 years as we didn't want to disrupt anybody who decided to move in. Instead we chose a medium dark 20 year latex exterior house paint in a gun metal gray called Knight's Charcoal. That is because our area is cooler and the interior temps need to be at around 100 degrees for the babies. Grays appear to be the color of choice by the experts however I see nothing wrong with trying colors in the colonial blue range or tan/brown range and many people use these colors successfully.

Now here’s what is interesting, I had no idea so many species of bats were threatened until about 15 years ago. More than half of American bat species are in severe decline or already listed as endangered- hmmm, could it be due to all the trucks spraying chemicals to kill mosquitoes??? I also learned that bats are the slowest reproducing mammals on earth for their size, making them exceptionally vulnerable to extinction. I also found out that that one little brown bat can catch over 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in one hour. Well, that places bats high on my popularity list.

Our occupants are little brown bats which are migratory and very much in need of housing. You have little brown bats in the area where you garden too. I checked.

Nice web site-
https://www.batcon.org/

cynthia_h
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This discussion is sooooooo frustrating to me. Not your fault.

DH and I visited Downieville in the mid and late '90s to see a distant relative of his. She was a wonderful woman, vigorous and in her 80s. She led us around town--an old mining town--and recommended that we visit the local mine museum.

This local mine museum (sorry, forgot the name, but it's in Sierra County, California) has a couple of shafts which visitors can observe. I noticed some fluttering and asked the docent, "Is that...a bat?" "Oh, yes! We have California Brown Bats patrolling the shafts! They eat their weight in mosquitoes and other insects every day!"

All RIGHT, I thought. We've got mosquitoes at our house; maybe I can get a bat house and take care of both bats and mosquitoes. :twisted:

Unfortunately, when I started looking into it, the Bay Area was described as "not suitable" for bats. These bats, it was stated, don't roost any lower than 3,000 feet (900 m), and we are of course at sea level. Well, maybe 10 to 20 feet above sea level.

So, no bats.... :( And LOTS of mosquitoes. Kind of worrisome, now that West Nile Virus is on the loose. The bird population in my Coast Redwood has dropped since WNV showed up. One year, I had 11 species of birds nesting/resting/hanging out in the tree. This year, maybe 2 nests.

Any sea-level-friendly bats that anyone knows of???

Cynthia H.
USDA Zone 9, Sunset Zone 17

TheLorax
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Although the Bay area isn't suitable for bats, it is suitable for this species-
https://home.netcom.com/~bluebirds/webl.htm

Bluebirds eat mosquitoes too!

I don't know if you're into gardening for wildlife by utilizing native species of plants that can support specific species of birds indigenous to where you garden or not but most birds feed insects to their nestlings.

Newt
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The Bat Conservation International site that The Lorax posted has a wealth of info. Here's a list of which bats are most likely to occupy a bat house and where in the US, Canada and Mexico they are usually found.
https://www.batcon.org/pdfs/BatHouseBats.pdf

Cynthia, I did a google with San Francisco + bats and it appears there are bats in your area.
[url=https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/26/BAES11FCQ0.DTL&hw=bat&sn=002&sc=987url]Warning about rabid bat found in Sunset[/url]

Newt

TheLorax
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Different species of bats have different habitat requirements. That's why it's good to know the species indigenous to one's area. No sense buying or building a bathouse if you don't have a species that would use it because there are only isolated populations or because they aren't present at all. Although there are quite a few different species of bats in her area, I don't believe cynthia_h has a good shot at providing a bathouse with the expectation of it being occupied by bats some day.

Good that you found that link within batcom. That pretty much spells it out. If any of those species exist where one gardens in numbers greater than that which would be associated with an isolated population, there's a chance a bat house might be used by bats. You really need to get down to the nitty gritty by checking one's own county. Incur the expense of putting up a bathouse without sufficient population numbers in the local area and your money could very well go to providing European paper wasps or Asian lady beetles with habitat which would end up being a big disappointment.

There's a great book out there called the 'Forgotten Pollinators'. I highly recommend this book. Particularly for anyone interested in attracting bats to their property. There is great information on "nectar corridors" for gardeners who might be interested in this type of deal. Additionally, looks as if cynthia_h is smack dab in a migratory corridor for countless species of wildlife.

cynthia_h
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Migratory pathway for wildlife...the Pacific Flyway, definitely. Lots of Canada Geese, pelicans (!), mallards, and other migratory birds around here. Many have set up year-round housekeeping in the Bay Area to the point where a few golf courses and some municipal parks have hired handler/Border Collie teams to chase the birds off.

No hunting; just trying to reduce the poo/germs/ick content of their grounds. After all, parents want their kids to be able to play safely and cleanly in a park, or maybe they'd like to put down a blanket and have a picnic? Not in bird poo...thus the Border Collies.

But as to bats: no, my county has never put out a warning about bats. I read a local paper as well as the San Francisco paper. No rabid bats found (although I worry about the rabid bat Newt reported on; where was its true habitat???) in my county. No warnings about bringing dead, found bats to the county health service for testing re. West Nile Virus, as there are for dead, found birds.

Our Coast Redwood is approx. 80 or so feet tall, to judge by its shadow and a visual projection by eye when down the street. Surely, if there are bats around, this tree would have been found suitable. After all, bats are nocturnal and birds are diurnal, so there wouldn't have been any conflict of interest in sharing the tree. Eleven species of birds were there one year--oh, yeah--and the squirrels...

The bluebird website kept talking about San Diego County. But, man, those birds are SOOOOOOO cute! :D I can only imagine how many bugs they can put away.

Here's a description of the distance from my home to San Diego:

It takes as long to drive from San Francisco to San Diego as it does to drive from Atlanta to Baton Rouge, Washington, DC, or Miami. I've driven a LOT in the Southeast, and DH has driven from the Bay Area to San Diego. Those birds are quite some distance from me, but I'll look again (just not tonight) to find out whether they live up here as well.

Still looking for mosquito abatement...

Cynthia H.
USDA Zone 9, Sunset Zone 17

TheLorax
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That was the first website that popped up for me when I typed in
Sialia + mexicana + California
It does provide some nice habitat information.

Here, try this website instead-
https://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Western_Bluebird_dtl.html

Cornell's site is superior for birds anyway.

Where you garden is a lot more than just a migratory corridor for birds. The Pacific Flyway is but only a portion of that migratory corridor.

Canada Geese and White Tail Deer are a big problem around here. Their population numbers are so out of control we have boil orders on our water several times a year. We're beyond border collies.

cynthia_h
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Wow. Thank you so much, Lorax. Maybe I can do a bluebird nestbox and attract them to my yard.

The Cornell site *is* good. I loved the little film of Mom feeding Babies.

Cynthia

Hseofpaine
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TheLorax wrote:Oh oh oh! Don't buy those plans! Hold off spending money. I've got them for that exact bathouse you're looking at. Send me your e-mail address privately and I will forward the plans to you along with photographs of the interior space and completed bathouses and also a photograph of mine mounted. You don't need to spend any money! I've got the plans!
Hi, I just came across this post and wanted to build the same bat house this weekend. Would you think it would work in Illinois? Also would you be willing to send me the plans also?

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applestar
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...SEVEN YEARS LATER...

I had installed a bathouse, but perhaps due to most of the area farms already having been sold and turned into developments so that bats were no longer living in the area and already displaced, perhaps due to devastating bat population decline in NJ, my bat house hasn't been doing much except to be used as a beanpole:
Image

I had given up on it ever being occupied and hadn't even inspected it this year.

...BUT...

This morning, DH called after he left the house to say that our next door neighbor had caught his attention in great excitement to have him let me know she found a "baby bat" on her patio umbrella. It turned out she was looking all over for me outside and this was one morning I hadn't gone outside soon after sunup. :roll: I went over and saw the little thing. I couldn't get close enough, but she sent me the photos she took:
image.jpg
When the sun rose over aother neighbor's house, the bat took off, but unfortunately dove into the "fort"/outdoor cat shelter. I'm hoping it will be OK from her outdoor cats and will eventually find its way to my bathouse which is only a short way over the fence and into my yard from where it is now.

Also, tonight, kids and I were outside hoping to see the Perseids Meteor Shower -- we saw a few -- and they said they could see black shadows flitting about.

Now that I know they are around this year, I'm going to check and make sure there are no wasps nest in my bathouse. I hope these other bats would consider checking it out, too.... :-()



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