Bat House Forum

[William Bagwell]

Frank raised an interesting point in the Audubon Bat House thread. Why are predator guards so rarely mentioned here or in bat house literature in general?

Have been lurking over at the purple martin forum the past few days and have seen dozens of references to predator guards. Almost standard equipment to have some sort of guard and a few even have multiple guards each designed to stop different predators.

Just wondering if it is something that should be emphasized a bit more.

William

[flyin-lowe]

I have not brought it up out of ignorance. But I can give you some facts. Purple Martin nests will be raided by snakes, raccoons, hawks, and owls. (and a few other things). Raccoons and snakes mainly attack at night but not always. I do not know enough about bats to know if they are always out in flight during the night or if this depends on the weather. People on that forum have been fighting these predators for years and can show you some unbelievable pictures of snakes climbing straight up wall, up metal poles, around baffle type predator guards etc. The most effective way to keep snakes out is using electric fence charges. I have kids so this is not an option. The next best is bird netting. It is wrapped around the bottom of the pole in an umbrella pattern. As the snakes try to climb up through it they get tangled up.
The bats are notorious for landing on the front of a house or gourd and they will beat their wings against the house until the martins try to fly out and they grab them. Once owls successfully capture martins they will come back night after night until your site is abandoned. To combat this people use very deep cavities and also put porches and metal rods in front of the house so the owls can't get too close. If the cavity is deep enough the martins will stay inside instead of flushing out. Owls and hawks will also swoop by at dusk and down and grab a martin right off the porch of the house or off of a perch. The good news is that bats don't (at least I don't think they do) land and sit out in open areas like a bird does. Also the way a bat house is shaped the owls can really sit in front of the opening and flush the bats out. There also isn't much for an owl to perch on and beat his wings against the house.
As William stated if you are interested in learning about keeping predators away visit the purplemartin.org forum. Those people are pros, because a few successfull attacks can cause a colony that took years to establish to leave and never come back. I am assuming bats would do the same.

[Terry Lobdell]

Here in NWPA I've never had any predation of my bat houses.......snakes are not as much of a problem here in the north as they are in the south........I have heard of raccoons climbing up and trying to reach in the crevices, but unless the box is very crowded the raccoons should not be able to reach up very far. Also where I live raccoons have a lot of easier food to get than climbing a bat house.....

I do have some of my poles covered with aluminum near the ground mainly to stop mice from going up and building nests in the winter.....

I am a firm believer in the stove pipe predator guard as I have bluebirds and the stove pipe is very effective....

[LarryH]

I am also a firm believer in predator guards for my bird houses. A few years ago, I noticed something on the pole of the bathouses and I went out to check on it. It turned out to be a rat snake wrapped around the pole about 3' off the ground -- it was in the process of gradually climbing the pole. I knocked off and then enough grease on the bottom of the pole to keep it from climbing again until I could put a guard on the pole. I don't know what the snake could have done once it got to the top, since the bat houses are about 8" away from the pole and I don't think it could have gotten into the house itself. But, I just didn't like the idea of it climbing that pole.

I found a good site with instructions on make the stovepipe predator guide: http://www.ehow.com/how_7821791_make-guards-bird-houses.html

[Markcuda]

I have had a colony of martins for 23 years and never and I reiterate, never seen a snake, never seen a hawk, and never seen a raccoon in my yard.
I live in the end of town but still the suburbs, if I would of thought that predators were a bother at my colony, believe me, I would of put them up.
Just letting you know from 23 years of being a martin landlord.
A lot of them members on that forum are very anal retentive
Your mileage may very.

[flyin-lowe]

Larry How is your house attached to the pole? Not sure I was following you that your house was 8 foot away from the pole. However it attaches I am sure a snake could get to it. You would be suprised what a hungry rat snake can do.

[LarryH]

Larry How is your house attached to the pole? Not sure I was following you that your house was 8 foot away from the pole. However it attaches I am sure a snake could get to it. You would be suprised what a hungry rat snake can do.

They are attached by metal brackets, but they are 8 inches away. Sorry for the confusion.

[LarryH]

I have had a colony of martins for 23 years and never and I reiterate, never seen a snake, never seen a hawk, and never seen a raccoon in my yard.
I live in the end of town but still the suburbs, if I would of thought that predators were a bother at my colony, believe me, I would of put them up.
Just letting you know from 23 years of being a martin landlord.
A lot of them members on that forum are very anal retentive
Your mileage may very.

I wish we had your environment! We have racoons, opossums, skunks, c0yotes, and plenty of snakes (fortunately, no poisoness ones). But, then, we live i farm country with lots of old barns, fields, and cow pastures. I had to finally put bird spikes on top of my bat houses and pole -- the hawks developed a habit of sitting on top of the houses waiting for the daily emerging of the bats so they could feast on them.

We've had martins since 1982, and I love seeing them come back every spring. Last year I had to add another house to ensure their colony could all nest. We also have barn swallow which multiplied to the extent that I had to install nest cups for them along the rafters to provide more nests. I had planned to put up another bat house this spring, but I didn't get it done in time. The 3 houses I have were all packed last year, but they are still pretty much empty so far this spring.

[Markcuda]

Larry, now if I just could get bats in my two houses, life would be perfect

[flyin-lowe]

Larry How is your house attached to the pole? Not sure I was following you that your house was 8 foot away from the pole. However it attaches I am sure a snake could get to it. You would be surprised what a hungry rat snake can do.

They are attached by metal brackets, but they are 8 inches away. Sorry for the confusion.

My bad, for some reason when I read that I thought it said your house was 8 FEET away from the pole, now you can see how I was confused. No matter how it attaches if there is not a guard at the bottom to keep a rat snake from getting up the pole I am certain they could get into it. I have seen pictures of them bypassing some pretty elaborate predator guards.

[William Bagwell]

Shame that visitors from the purple martin forum can see this thread, and not the thread in the "EVERYTHING ELSE" sub forum. Have to be logged in see our off topic ramblings which have included a lot of purple martins as well as predator guards lately. The very sad story of the snake attack on a PM nest caught on live web cam was just mentioned this morning.

Snake story of my own: A few weeks ago my wife and I were walking around behind our house looking at the tiny guano 'pile' from our four (so far this year) resident bats. I walked about 20 feet towards the center of the back of the house, glanced at the ground, then looked up and reminded her that the bats had moved to this spot last year after it go really hot. Looked down again to search for guano when suddenly she said 'snake' in a louder than normal voice. Not screaming or anything, just loud enough to get my attention.

Now remember that I had just looked up and was at that moment looking down. I'm not seeing any snake and knowing my wife is not one to exaggerate I start widening my search. Starting to get just a little concerned and catch her pointing at something out of the corner of my eye. Pointing at something *at* my eye level (Expletive deleted!) A five and a half foot black rat snake wrapped around an aluminum ladder right there less than half *his* body length from *my* face.

Once I regained my composure enough to determine that it absolutely positively was non poisonous, I carefully caught him to re-locate. We know from previous experience that across the creek 'up by the mail box' is not far enough and that they come right back within a hour or two. A mile up the road apparently is since if this one was a returnee it took him two or three years to find his way back. Don't remember catching one last year.

Only have one bat house pole up at the moment so it will not be that big of deal to move it this winter. Made the mistake of putting it in a fence line so that it will be extremal difficult to add a useful predator guard to it. The second almost finished pole will have one installed as soon as it is up.

William

[Markcuda]

Shame that visitors from the purple martin forum can see this thread

Should they not be able to see it?

[William Bagwell]

Let me phrase it a bit differently.

It would be better if our visitors from the other forum could see both threads, or neither thread. The other thread where predator guards continue to be discussed, including pictures of them in use, is setup so that only logged in users can easily see it.

I'm assuming that Joe set it up that way deliberately so that our off topic ramblings would not show up in web searches. However, he failed to consider that some search bots (including both Google and Yahoo) pull this forum while logged in. As a result if you search on things discussed in the "EVERYTHING ELSE" sub forum you still get a hit and can see a summary. Clicking on the summary however, will pop up a log in screen (unless you happen to be logged in) and warning. Clever folks can then go back and click on the "Cached" link and then get to read it anyway. <gasp>

Of course when you try to click to view the next page the old log in screen rears its ugly head again. But really clever (and persistent) folks can guess obscure words that may continually come up in the thread and search for those...