Bat House Forum

[Joe Spencer]

Dave, I have done many bat/bat house presentations for the public and schools in my area.  My fondest was my first 13 years ago for the nashua river watershed: http://www.nashuariverwatershed.org/index.html .  I posted flyers at local coffee shops etc. and had a good turn out of approximately 50 people.  I also had a door prize of a small bat house which probably helped bring in a few of them.  It was very well received for after the presentation half the audience stayed to ask me questions that they were reluctant to ask during the presentation.  Although I was slightly nervous it was shortlived as I gained confidence as the presentation went on. I used a index card (faced me but not the audience) to remind me of the main topics for the discussion.  I was amazed at how little people knew about these creatures and all the misconceptions they had and then quickly I was reminded that I too had them previously.

[Dave Miller]

Dave, I have done many bat/bat house presentations for the public and schools in my area.  My fondest was my first 13 years ago for the nashua river watershed: http://www.nashuariverwatershed.org/index.html .  I posted flyers at local coffee shops etc. and had a good turn out of approximately 50 people.  I also had a door prize of a small bat house which probably helped bring in a few of them.  It was very well received for after the presentation half the audience stayed to ask me questions that they were reluctant to ask during the presentation.  Although I was slightly nervous it was shortlived as I gained confidence as the presentation went on. I used a index card (faced me but not the audience) to remind me of the main topics for the discussion.  I was amazed at how little people knew about these creatures and all the misconceptions they had and then quickly I was reminded that I too had them previously.

Thanks for the info, Joe.

Here is how the presentation was structured last night:

- It was presented by the Naturally Beautiful Backyards program (http://www.naturallybeautifulbackyards.org/) and led by three people: 1) a USFWS biologist; 2) a representative from the county solid waste program (who likes bats), and 3) another biologist from the EE center where the meeting was held.

- They started off by handing out some materials, including a small book about bats.  It looked like all the materials were from BCI.

- They had a stack of laminated "bat facts".  They gave each person one card and we went around the room and read them, then they collected them.  People seemed to really enjoy that.

- The presenters went through their material (powerpoint on a laptop, with video projector), answering questions as they went.  Most of the material was from BCI.

- They had a table with food products that come from plants pollinated by bats, and encouraged people to try samples (except for the bottle of tequila ).  They also had a small bat house, and several mounted bats including an incredibly cool bat skeleton.

- At the end they handed out bat house plans & bat house info from the BCI website.

I found it interesting that the people in the audience who knew the most about bats were the kids.  That was very encouraging!

One of the presenters had some sort of zoology chart which shows where bats sit in the species tree.  He confirmed something I heard a long time ago, that megachiroptera bats' closest relatives are small primates, and of these, the closest relatives are the lemurs.  You can really see this if you look at the face of a flying fox (fruit bat) next to the face of a lemur.  The chart was kind of hard to read so I couldn't see the closest relatives for the microchiroptera.

Anyway, it was time well spent.

[Dave Miller]

Last night 12/10/08 I checked the bat houses. I didn't get there until after sunset so getting the focus right required a lot of trial and error. Here is the east house:



There is some dark object at the right side of the 4th crevice from the bottom, but I'm not sure what it is. It is pretty late in the year for bats to be active, so I did not see any of them flying. I would expect that all the bats would be in torpor off in some cave, but I suppose there could be one who decided to stay the winter in the house. I think the temperature in the "attic nursery" is probably stable enough (we have relatively mild winters), but when we get winds from the east in the winter, the humidity can get quite low. The rest of the winter the humidity is pretty high (yes, it rains often here).

Another shot of the east house.



The west house.



It looks like there are a few droppings in the house, which is very good because I never saw any bats in this house. The flat rocks below the house did not show any droppings, but with all the wind & rain I would expect them to be washed/blown away pretty quickly this time of year.

In January I am going to bring out a ladder and a stick and knock out the wasp and mud dauber nests, once I am absolutely sure there are no bats.

[Joe Spencer]

It seems like the only way I can get good pictures up into a box is to shine a light up in. The best thing is to have another person hold the light while I use the camera.

Terry, I just received for Christmas the powerful (200 lumens) 1 LED flashlight below and found it incredible at around $25. Works great with 2 AA rechargeable nimh batteries or alkalines. Just take a 1" spade bit and bore a 1 inch hole through the center of a 1 ft long 2x4 or 2x6 and it will hold the flashlight steady on the ground and shine it up into the bat house while you are taking photos.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=202569

http://www.shiningbeam.com/servlet/the-53/Romisen-RC-dsh-N3-CREE-Q5/Detail

[Terry Lobdell]

Joe, that is great news! I'll be looking forward to some of your pictures using it! Thanks!

[Dave Miller]

Yesterday I took a crew out to the refuge to do some of our normal habitat restoration work. We had a couple weeks of cold, snow, ice, and wind right around Christmas, and a number of the dead trees had fallen, including the one on which the west house was mounted. I knew this would happen someday, I just wasn't expecting it so soon.

However instead of smashing the bat house to bits, the tree broke right where the bat house was mounted - am I lucky or what?


The tree was about 130 feet tall when it fell. There is about 25 feet left.

The mounting bracket at the top of the house was torn off but otherwise the house is undamaged:


It is hard to believe that such a huge trunk could break off right where the house is without damaging the house! I was also lucky in that the other tree which I had considered using came down as well - but at the root. The bat house would have been crushed if I had mounted it on that tree when it came down.


The two bolts at the bottom are holding it in place fairly well. Although the winds yesterday and right now are gusting up to 60 mph so I am sure it is stressing the wood. I will get out there soon and move the house down a bit so the top of the house is supported.

One of the volunteers stayed afterward to help me clean the wasp nests out of the houses. That all went fairly well although with the wind, being up at the top of an extension ladder was a little scary. I just held on to knots on the tree with one hand and knocked the nests out with a skinny stick in the other hand. Of course I first used a flashlight to make 100% sure there were no bats in the house, including above the wasp nests. There were wasps present but since the temperature was about 40 degrees they were very lethargic. But not completely so - when the wasps came raining down, one went down my neck and got me good. I would have positioned the ladder a bit to the side of the house (vs. right underneath) but the ground was too uneven to allow that.

At the west house, when I was at the top of the ladder, the wind blew my stocking cap off and carried it 60 feet into the creek . But I was able to retrieve it with a stick .

Here is a panorama of the area:


Here is the current skyline of this area, looking from the opposite direction:


Compare with this photo taken in June, taken from roughly the same angle. The two biggest dead trees in this scene are now gone.


Anyway I just thought you all might like this little story!

[Joe Spencer]

Dave, I think the bat house gods were looking out for you after all your efforts at this site. Amazing photo oH the odds of this! Dave, do I remember correctly that you're not allowed to mount a bat house on a pole and can only utilize dead trees in this location? If so too bad you're not allowed to cut the upper half or 2/3rds of a dead tree creating your own post which would likely stand for years before it was rotted or fell over. Dave, do you know if there are any trout in this stream/river or is it too far south/warm geographically to sustain them. Congrats on your good fortune and great pics...

[Dave Miller]

Yesterday a friend and I re-mounted the bat house on the broken tree, lowering it a couple of feet.

I first re-attached the metal plate at the top of the house. When the tree fell it sheared off the deck screws holding the plate to the bat house, leaving the plate attached to the tree on the ground. Fortunately the tree landed with the plate facing up so I could re-use it and the big (1/4"x6") lag screw. Then I climbed up to the top of the stump and re-attached the plate to the bat house, then attached the rope to the plate. The top of the stump made a nice place to hold the tools.

I moved the ladder to the opposite side of the stump, to the left of the house (I am right-handed). I cut off the knot that was right below the house, and of course I was downwind so I got a face full of sawdust. I removed one of the two the lag screws that went through the landing pad, and thought I could hold on to the house while removing the other, but this was impossible - the house started to pivot on the remaining lag screw, which would have likely rotated 180 degrees and pushed the top of the ladder sideways, which would have likely sent me and the ladder crashing to the ground. So I had my friend put tension on the rope, keeping the bat house upright. I repositioned the ladder so it was directly below the bat house, which is what I should have done. Thus I was able to remove the remaining lag screw and rest the bat house on a rung of the ladder, while my friend kept the top of the house steady with the rope. Unfortunately I knocked off the piece of wainscoting that stuck out the bottom of the house (see photos above) but I should be able to glue it back on sometime.

Then I lifted and lowered the house onto the face of the ladder until it was suspended by the rope (which passed over a 2x4 I had placed on top of the stump). I climbed down and carefully lowered and repositioned the ladder to be to the left of the house once again. This allowed me to put a deck screw through the plate at the top, supporting the weight of the house while I removed the rope from the plate. Then I used a level to straighten the house, and screwed in the lag screws - two through the landing pad, one through the metal plate at the top. I added a few more deck screws through the plate at the top just for good measure.

So the house should be good until the stump comes completely down, which should be quite a while since there is not so much weight and wind surface area any more. Speaking of wind, while walking out to the site we came across a big metal stock tank which had blown about a mile, through the fields and over a fence from the neighboring ranch. The site gets a great deal of wind in the winter. We had to carry the ladder & tools about 1/3 mile due to snow drifts blocking the road.

I didn't have a camera with me so no pictures this time. Carrying an extension ladder, saws, a backpack full of tools, etc. was plenty of stuff to carry without adding a camera to that. Also we were in kind of a hurry.

To answer Joe's questions:

do I remember correctly that you're not allowed to mount a bat house on a pole and can only utilize dead trees in this location? If so too bad you're not allowed to cut the upper half or 2/3rds of a dead tree creating your own post which would likely stand for years before it was rotted or fell over.

Yes, that is correct, no poles allowed. But a dead standing makes a pretty good pole. I don't think the refuge would go for me cutting anything, they pretty much want nature to take its course (except when fighting invasives, which is an all-out war ). Also in order to use power tools on federal land you have to have a special certification which shows you have been properly trained on that tool (which I don't have). Also, dead trees are very important for birds and insects as I'm sure you are aware. In fact this tree contained several nesting cavities which were used by purple martins. It was one of only a handful of natural purple martin roosts in this half of the state. Purple martins were extinct(?) from this area for many years but they are slowly coming back mostly due to a nest box program in the area (see photo below). So the loss of this tree is a real bummer for the martin restoration efforts.

do you know if there are any trout in this stream/river or is it too far south/warm geographically to sustain them

Yes this stream does contain native steelhead and coho salmon, both of which are threatened species (see http://www.fws.gov/columbiariver/pdfdoc ... bons99.pdf). This creek has quite a history which you can read about in that report. We recently discovered that this part of the creek channel was actually formed by another creek, which used to flow the opposite direction of the creek today! If I had tons of time I would do some habitat restoration on the creek - it gets way too much sun exposure which warms the water and harms the fish. We have made some progress in that regard but that is a lower priority for the FWS. Here is an older shot of the creek a bit farther downstream:


Here is one of the purple martin nesting box sites. This is about half a mile from the bat house (that is the Columbia River in the background). I believe they call these "bird bottles". They are pretty ugly IMHO but I guess they last forever and are easy to clean out each year. And they are definitely working, although we found a lot of dead birds this year due to unusually cold spring weather (they apparently starved to death).

[Dave Miller]

On 4/8/09 I checked the bat houses for the first time since January. There were no bats present but I did see one bat "on the wing" so they are back in the area.

I grabbed a few photos:

The wasps are starting to show up. This is from the top of the ladder. I had to re-glue a small board that I knocked off when I moved the bat house down on the tree. I did not have the glue with me that time so I had to come back out.





A pair of pileated woodpeckers were working the trees in the area.


Two deer were watching me. I was surprised that they did not seem to be bothered by my presence.

[Joe Spencer]

Nice shots Dave! Amazing how much colder it is here in NewEngland than your area. The only insects we have seen busy for a sustained time yet here in MA. is Ticks. No wasps or much else active yet. I have the pileated and plenty of deer in my yard tho.

[Dave Miller]

I was out doing some water line work and checked the houses. Nothing yet, except wasps and spiders.

East house:


West house:


There seem to be a LOT of wasps in our neck of the woods this year. But they are pretty tame. The only time I've gotten stung was when I was knocking nests out of a bat house and some wasps fell down my neck. I can't really blame them for fighting back after an insult like that. Also a reminder to wear a hood next time.

It was a beautiful evening:

[Erik]

Hi Dave,
a quick response (I must hurry to go to bed): great pictures! I like to see the surroundings of bat house locations. Makes it more vivid.

Erik

[Dave Miller]

I was out planting some trees last night and did a quick check on the east house at dusk. Still seems to be empty, though I imagine the bats may have already been out feeding. There are fewer wasps, though their nest is a bit larger now.

I also discovered that if I focus the camera on the bottom lip of the roof, the focus is just about right for the top of the crevices. Thus I am making a new design suggestion:

If you plan to take photos of the interior of your bat house, put something on the outside of the house which is at the height of the top of the crevices. This will allow you to get a perfect focus without so much trial and error (which can be pretty time consuming).

[Terry Lobdell]

Wow Dave, those are some amazing pictures!

[Dave Miller]

I visited the houses on 5/18/09, still no bats. The weather seems plenty warm enough, there are many insects, etc. so I'm not sure what the deal is. Recall that last year the first (and only?) bat appeared in the east house in July, a month after I placed the houses.

Standing at the base of the east house, looking down the creek toward the west. A green, green world.



East House. Wasps continue working on their nests.


West House.