Bat House Forum

[saguesw]

Hello:
I would like to move my bat house to a new pole about 50-75 feet from the existing one. This past summer I noticed bats were roosting between my purple martin house and the 4x6 pole that the house is mounted on. When I brought the house down (it is on a pulley system) after the season I winched a bat house up in it's place and the bats moved in that very day. Since then I have noticed up to 30 + bats leaving the house each night. I now need to put my PM house back up for the upcoming martin season and I would like to move the bat house to a permanent pole on the other side of the yard. I had thought that the bats would move out during the winter and I could do it then, but when I look up in the house at night I still see many bats roosting there. Is it possible to move the house while the bats remain inside? I will need to bring the house down from it temporary pole and attach it's to the new pole before I can raise the new pole in the new location... has anyone tried this before - does anyone have any advice?
Thanks.
Bill in Oviedo Florida

[cloudman75]

Bill,
I have relocated my bat houses several times but not under your exact conditions. Based on my experience with free tails in Georgia here at my place, I wil make the following comments:
You are far enough south in FlA. so that the free tails most likely will not leave in winter for hibernation. They may leave for a short period to go to a warmer spot for food sources, but may not. What I would do is wait until I had the permanent pole ready for use with the existing bat house.
Then shortly after dark, I would lower the bat house down and mount it on the new pole and put the pole in position with the existing bat house. Even if a few bats remain in the house they will probably fly out once you start lowering the bat house.
Once bats have selected a house they will locate it by sight and smell if it is near the same area within sight of the old location. It is very hard to get rid of them once they move into a bat house for some length of time.
If you look on this forum under photos, I relocated several existing houses last year and posted some info on the forum. The bats had no problems whatever in accepting the new locations. I would hope some others would respond with their experiences. Please keep the forum posted as to what you decide to do and the results as it is an interesting situation I think.

Frank
NW. GA. Metro Atlanta

[saguesw]

Frank thank you for replying so quickly.
I was thinking that I would wait for a warm day and then check after dark to see how many are out feeding. If most are out - then I will go ahead and move the pole. From your comments I gather you do not think the bats will have any trouble finding the new location since it will be less than 100 feet from the old location? I was considering mounting the box on the pole but leaving it right next to the old pole while being supported by braces from the ground and gradually moving it over by changing its location a few feet each day until I reached the new location. The new pole will be entirely above ground and mounted between two permanently dug in 4x4 so that it can swivel in future when I need to maintain the houses. I will keep you posted and let you know how it goes.
Thanks again.
PS. I will try and post picture if I can.

[Terry Lobdell]

Bill,
I've moved occupied bat boxes many times after pups are flying. I agree with what Frank has told you. 50 to 75 away should not be a problem. They might be a little confused at first, but even if the move causes them to leave temporarily they will be back as long as the new location has roughly the same sun exposure.

One thing that might inhibit them would be moving it too close to trees. Bats up here in NWPA seem to be leary of boxes mounted in close proximity of trees (less than 15 feet).

Another thing I might be concerned about having an active bat box that close to a purple martin structure is the possibility of bat bugs getting at the purple martin nestlings next year.

I once inquired about building a combination chimney swift tower/bat house and was strongly warned not to since bat bugs can easily kill young birds.

[saguesw]

Terry:

Thank you for your input. I did not think about the bug issue but will have to look into it - perhaps someone on the PM forum will have some experience with bats and PM's. I measured the distance to the new pole from the old pole and it is just under 45 feet. I have the new pole ready to go and I have dedided to add another bat house to the back side of the pole. I think I may raise the new pole with the new house on it and leave the old house at its existing location for awhile and see what develps. I still have a few weeks before I have to get the PM house up and this may give the bats sometime to investigate the new house before I move them.
I will keep you posted and try and get some pictures up as well. Thanks again.

Bill in Oviedo FL

[SaveLucy]

Been a long time since I visited this forum, but I wanted to chime in with the little parasitology I know. Bat and bed bugs are supposed to be highly host specific and the only time they should move to a non-typical host is in the absence of a preferred host. When you have bat populations that roost shift often, I could see it being a problem, but I'm not inclined to believe that most birders, no matter how avid, could pick out a bat bug from a tick or from some beetle larvae. Don't mean to ding those fine folks, but most people don't undestand the host specificity of ectoparasites very well! To put a finer point on it, specificity is the reason that human pubic lice and head lice are different species. And there are bird parasites that look very much like the bed/bat bug but are not.

In addition, we often have small bats, tricolored and little browns, that use bluebird boxes in VA during the spring. We don't seem to have a bat bug problem with bluebirds even after years of monitoring.

So I don't think you need to get too ambitious with moving the box far away to avoid bat bugs on PMs. I'm willing to be schooled if anyone knows different, but parasites do prefer their own hosts!

Leslie

[Terry Lobdell]

Good info Leslie! Probably there would be less likely to be a problem since the purple martin pole would be 50 - 75 feet from the bat house pole. The incidence I heard about was on a chimney swift tower/combo bat house structure.

A lot of people I mount bat boxes for do become concerned when they see numbers of bat bugs in an established box. I reassure them that bat bugs are host specific.

[cloudman75]

Bill,
From my experience with bat bugs over several years, I would tend to agree with Leslie and Terry that your PMs will not be bothered as long as the bat bugs have a host, ie. bats. When the bat bugs no longer have bats for a host they will get hungry and look for any host containing blood. By the time the bats leave you should have no little pm babies. I have a blue bird house that has been used once or twice each year which is only 30 ft from several bat houses. I have never had a bat bug problem with the blue bird house.
To summarize, I think you will not have a problem with your birds based on my experience with a great number of bats over the years and also I have read of nothing.

[saguesw]

I have completed the move and all seems well. I decided to erect a new house on a new pole in the new location and see if the bats would move over on their own. The new house was up for a couple of weeks and I noticed that a couple of bats had moved over. After another couple of weeks I moved the old house to the new pole - back to back with the new house and all seems to be well. The bats are now using both houses. I have put my purple martin gourds up on the old pole and hopefully everyone will be happy. lol. Thanks for the advise and help. I will try and attach a picture of the new pole with the old pole/house in the back ground.
Thanks again.
Bill in Oviedo FL.

http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/475/146q.jpg

[Terry Lobdell]

That looks really good! I look forward to more updates on your progress!