Bat House Forum

[Richathome]

When I opened our webpage and saw the snowflakes on the screen I realized I had better post a report on my season with the bats. In November I had 6 Big Browns in my bat houses and the last 2 remained with me until a couple days before Thanksgiving. I kept checking my single chamber house mounted under our back deck where one spent the winter last year but I did not have a bat use it at late season. I'm very happy a Big Brown didn't decide to stay there like last year when I provided heat for it all winter.

My summer bat count was the same as last year with 26 Little Brown Bats as my maximum exit count. The few Big Browns that used the big houses were sporadic. A few in the spring, a couple throughout the summer then the 6 in November.

Early December my wife and I went to a meeting where Dr Joyce Hofman who recently retired from the Illinois Natural History Survey gave a fantastic presentation on the Bats of Illinois. She gave us a handout on 12 of the bats that frequent or migrate through or sometimes use Illinois. Red bat, Hoary bat (the largest species in the Midwest), Silver haired bat, Evening bat, Big Brown bat, Eastern Pipistrelle or Tri Colored bat (the smallest Illinois bat), Little Brown bat, Northern bat. Indiana bat, Gray bat, Southeastern bat (uses the Southern most of Illinois), and the Rafinesque's Big-Eared bat that also uses the Southern most of IL. She spoke on The Indiana bat and placing radio telemetry on them to monitor their travel and hibernation. Some migrated into Michigan and wintered in IL. The use of mist nets for research and the impact new roads or developments would have on the bat population, discussed WNS and wind farms impact of the bats. She had a display case of all these bats so we could actually see the true size and color of the bats. She had a skull and lower jaw of a Hoary bat, our largest IL. bat to show us the size and sharpness of their teeth. The close ended with a Q&A session that covered rabies, bat removal, wind farms and more. This is a webpage of Joyce http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/staff/index.ph ... me=hofmann Type in Bats in the search box at the top of her page for some interesting reading. Everyone at her presentation were very pleased. As a special note, Joyce has been to our family Thanksgiving dinners for several years so it was a great pleasure to attend a very good friends seminar.

Cloudman75: After looking at the various bats in Joyces' display case I saw that the Eastern Pipistrelles is quite smaller and similar in looks to the Little Brown bat. could this be your mystery bat that visits you? I keep reading your posts to see if you have determined the species.

[cloudman75]

Rich,
Thanks for end of season update on the forum, very interesting reading. Yes I do think the small bats could be pipistrelles which are not uncommon here in my area. I know I had one in my attic ventilation louver because I saw it up within 1 ft while viewing from the attic. It had very pink coloring on its wing bones. The others I cannot get a close look but I have had the opinion for a long time that they were. I had a most interesting season with 3 big browns and some freetails this year which I have never seen before. The big browns came early had a couple of pups and left when it got hot. One stopped by in the same box a couple of weeks ago., It left when the weather turned cold below freezing at night. I had over 200 little browns total in my three boxes. The boxes are empty now as I checked tonight and most every night when the weather is good. I am getting better with the camera and did post some photos of the free tails and a big brown a few weeks back. I will most likely have a few bats for a night or two this winter when we get weather in the 60s. I can't imagine where the freetails came from but they stayed more than two months. Bat knowledge is similar to medical knowledge, it is not an exact science. I have plans to construct a large two chamber mounting board type house similar to Terry's. I have mixed thoughts after all the success I have had with standard type smaller houses. I'll be taking down all three houses I have mounted on metal poles shortly after Christmas when help is available. I plan to mount them on the mounting board if I can handle the weight. It will be heavy.

Frank