Bat House Forum

[flyin-lowe]

I finally remembered this morning to take a quick picture of the area surrounding my bat house. The pole it is on is actually on State Park property but the pole is owned by a local utility. The utility gave me permission to put the house up. Anyway as you can see in the before picture there was a bunch of brush and saplings behind the bat house. The house was as tall as most of it but I still think it would hurt the appeal of the location to the bats. Last summer the State started clearing out all the brush and left only the pine trees. It is hard to tell from the picture but the pine trees are 40-50 feet away from the house and now it is a lot more open. It was weird that I have lived in this place for 11 years and after I put the bat house up I was thinking about cutting some of the brush away from the pole near the bat house. A few weeks later they started doing it all around the park. Maybe they were reading my mind.

This was the first bat house I built and it is 24x24 with three chambers.

BEFORE


AFTER

[Terry Lobdell]

That is a great looking bat house and also looks like really good habitat! I have been noticing more and more that bats seem to like evergreen trees close by.......possibly they provide good cover from owls at night?


I have also heard many people tell me about bats roosting in evergreens in late summer and early fall......maybe during migration?

[flyin-lowe]

It is hard to tell from the pics but there is a row of trees about 150-200 yards behind the bat house. Behind that is a large lake of about 100 acres. Then on the other side of the street the main lake at the park, which is close to 1000 acres. So there is plenty of water nearby, and as I mentioned I am seeing bats so I think it is just a matter of time. Hopefully by this fall I have some takers.

[cloudman75]

Great looking spot for bats. I would put a white garbage bag under the bat house at the pole about April to make any droppings stand out so you can see them. That way you will know if any bats are scouting your bat house for a home colony. Jut place a few rocks on the bag to hold it in place.
I suspect by mid april that you have a great chance of getting bats in the house if you have seen them in the area.
Nice size and color of the house for your area I think.
The water you mentioned makes it ideal for feeding bats.

Frank

[flyin-lowe]

I think I am going to put some white stone around the base of the pole. Since it is State Property they come through and bush hog it every couple weeks. Whenever I am using weed killer I kill the weeds around the base of the pole so they don't have to get close when the mow. I am sure if I put something down like trash bag, or pie pan, etc it will get picked up. Some white gravel/stone would be OK.

[cloudman75]

Good idea if you can put stones it would be better than a plastic bag. We had temps in the 60F range recently so I painted my old five chamber heavy bat house yesterday. I have a plan to get it in the air tomorrow using an old boat winch and ropes provided the good weather holds. I painted it a royal blue
somewhat darker than the old blue because that's the only blue ready mixed they had at Lowes.

Frank

[flyin-lowe]

I am trying to get a copy of the video of my friend putting up the 50"x50" five chamber house I built for him. The problem is he filmed it with his Iphone and the file is like 195 meg. He couldn't figure out why he couldn't email it to me. I am going to have to put it on a disk and upload it to youtube. He used some pulleys and his tractor and raised it right up.

[Dave Miller]

I think I am going to put some white stone around the base of the pole. Since it is State Property they come through and bush hog it every couple weeks. Whenever I am using weed killer I kill the weeds around the base of the pole so they don't have to get close when the mow. I am sure if I put something down like trash bag, or pie pan, etc it will get picked up. Some white gravel/stone would be OK.

I like to put a 12" or larger diameter flat rock (or two smaller ones) under my houses to catch the guano. If the area gets mowed, bury the rock just enough so that it won't get hit by the mower.

I have also noticed that a plant with large leaves works well as a guano-catcher. But if there is just grass underneath, it is really hard to find bat droppings in grass, unless there is a lot of it.