Bat House Forum

[Terry Lobdell]

Here is a 3 crevice box I mounted in December at a State Park in NW PA. Judging from guano underneath, I'm guessing it's got about 50 little browns. The white farm house in the background has hundreds of little browns roosting in it. If you look under the trees in the back yard you can see the posts of four bat houses that have been there for many years.

[Terry Lobdell]

It's vented on the sides in all 3 baffles. The front 2 crevices have holes drilled covered with soffet vent. The back vent is completely open. The entire box is aluminum painted flat black for low maintenance.

[Terry Lobdell]

There are 2 informational plaques nearby.

[Terry Lobdell]

Here are two close ups:

[Terry Lobdell]

[Terry Lobdell]

There are hundreds of little browns roosting in this old farmhouse behind the new maternity box.

[Terry Lobdell]

These are four bat houses in the back yard of the farm house. Even though they are in the shade they have a suprisingly high occupancy. The day I took these pictures, 6/12/08, the one in the front had around 70 and the wide one in back had easily over 100 little browns. I have spoke of these boxes in other posts. They have osb baffles with no saw kerfs and the bats easlily cling to the surfaces. The boxes originally had flat roofs which leaked and weathered the osb board. This may have actually made the surface easier for the bats to roost from. In the fall of 2007 I put new roofs on all four of these boxes. I will probably put a coat of dark brown stain on the rough sawn hemlock exteriors this fall.

[Dave Miller]

Excellent work, Terry.   I am very happy to see the informational plaques.  Do you happen to have access to the plaque graphic files?

[Terry Lobdell]

Thanks Dave. I don't access to the graphic files.........I believe these were done by the PA state game commission and PA dept of conservation and natural resources. I will inquire the next time I am down to the park. These plaques do have excellent up to date info on them and are placed in a perfect spot. 

[kent borcherding]

Terry ,

Interesting group of bat houses.

I am going to duplicate the way you mounted the new roofs on the four bat houses.

Will overhang the roofs with a 1/2" gap on the front and sides for upward air movement in the bat houses.

Should be an interesting experiment to hold big browns in bat houses when ambient temps exceed 95 degrees F.

[Terry Lobdell]

Here is a heavily used bat house with osb baffles. There are no saw kerfs or scoring. This house originally had a flat roof which leaked. The water had a weathering effect which appeared to have roughened the surfaces quite a bit. They are now very urine stained. This house had about 70 little browns in it when I took this picture.

[Terry Lobdell]

We did an exit count July 25th here. 178 little browns exited the tall maternity box. I shined a light up afterwards and there were about 10 still up inside. So that makes 188 roosting in this box. I was very pleased since I just mounted it in December of 2007.

We did not have enough people to do a full count of all the bat houses in the back yard and the buildings. I shined a light up in the other houses beforehand to get an estimate. In the shed and the five bat houses we had probably 300 - 350 little browns all together. Even more roost in the farm house. Based on counts from other years, there are probably around 600 roosting at this site.

The shed had little browns roosting between the plywood covering the window and the glass. I got some good pictures and will post the soon!

[Terry Lobdell]

A full exit count was done at this location July 26, 2008. 698 little browns was the total in the 5 bat houses, garage and farm house! I was not able to participate but I was glad to hear the news. We hope to put up a couple more bat houses here in the next year or two.

[Joe Spencer]

Wow Terry that is fantastic. A great site, effort and achievement. :thumbsup1: