Bat House Forum

[N.capensis]

Hi All,

I thought I would share a few installation images from South Africa. We do not have the privilege of having a fully fledged bat house research community out here so we are testing the effectiveness of a few different designs for ourselves. Many of the areas we do installations in have regular summer temperatures in excess of 35C (95F) and as a result we are investigating the requirement for the house to be north facing (as we are in the S. Hemisphere) and have done a number of back-to-back installations in N/S as well as E/W and then obviously on buildings as well. The images below will give you some idea as to what we are doing. From left to right there is a 6 chamber box, a much wider 3 chamber box and on the right a variation of the old george design. On the bottom picture you can see an example of a slim 1 chamber box on the left.

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These are mounted on poll sites situated in citrus orchards where certain moth species play havoc so we're hoping to see some sort of an effect as a result of installing the boxes (obviously once we have signs of habitation. I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

I will update with some images of the inner workings to give you a better idea.

[William Bagwell]

Welcome! Looks like you have nice variety of styles and sizes up to test. A year or two down the road folks will be asking for your thoughts! In the USA our standard advice would be to put the single crevice bat house against a building that offers some thermal mass, and not on a pole. I think however that since you only have one like that to leave it for a few years before giving up.

Curious about the extra long landing pad on some of the boxes? You seem to be using some kind of ratio where the thickest bat house has the longest landing pad.

William

[Joe Spencer]

Bat houses placed in most orchards are successful here in the states. Is there a year round source of fresh water near your site and if so how far? Thank you for your post and welcome...

[cloudman75]

Very nice photos and bat houses. The poles look to be above ground about 16 ft just guessing. How high are they to the bottom of the bat houses.
I like the looks of the twin poles and multiple houses. I may do that in the future. Thanks for sharing your photos.

Frank

[N.capensis]

Thanks for the feedback.

We have installed similar set-ups at a number of sites, both on buildings and poles, so a lot of this is still in an 'investigation phase'. As a result we are also trying different types of houses and different size landing pads to try and decipher what works best out here. One of the constants that we do try to maintain is a nearby water source (within 1km), preferably dams however in some cases are only rivers or irrigation canals (around 9 or 10 feet wide).

The bat houses in the top image are about 16.5 feet off the ground and the bottom ones just over 10. We generally try to ensure nothing less then 14 feet.

[Terry Lobdell]

Great pictures! Do you have many species that are known to use bat houses?

[N.capensis]

@ Terry: Thanks, yes we do, the two main insectivorous bats in the study area are the Tadarida aegyptiaca and Neoromicia capensis, both of which are known to be crevice dwellers and have been seen in bat houses so I am hopeful!

[Bats3]

Good houses :D