Bat House Forum

[tcm]

Hi!

Here is a video from spring 2011 from one of the bat boxes mentioned in the 2011 fall issue of Bats. The owner has made a video and posted it on youtube. The species is soprano pipistrelles (Pipistrellus pygmaeus). Later in summer, appr 300 females and and unknown number of young occupied this box.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaNCSjx- ... re=related

Hope the link works!

Best wishes;
Tore

[cloudman75]

Thanks for sharing video Tore.
It appears that there are a lot of bats looking at the size of the guano pile under the house.
Regards,

Frank

[Terry Lobdell]

Great video! Did you have any trouble with pups falling?

[tcm]

No, I did not find any pups that had fallen out of the box, but I assume that gulls would find them easlily and remove any evidence of such an event during daytime.

Best;
Tore

[Joe Spencer]

Very nice!
Are there other bat houses located on the same building? If so were they occupied at some point as well?
What direction does this bat house face?

Thanks Tore!

[tcm]

Hi!

There are one more box (also painted black) on the main building facing east, but this is only used by few bats and only occationally (some bats leave for this box during daytime, possibly to cool off or to get away from the stress of several hundred bats :-). This box looses the sun around mid day. I have tried using artificial heat in this box, but it did not help. The box on the video is facing south. It is placed on the south eastern corner of the barn, so it will receive the morning sun (as soon as it rises from above the tall mountains surrounding this fiord landscape)and till appr. sunset (in the visible horizon, not astronomical sunset). I think this is a must at northern latitudes. Also, there is a large 1FW bat box from Schwegler on the barn (also facing south). Only a few droppings has been found here this summer/autumn.

Best wishes;
Tore