Bat House Forum

[cloudman75]

I took photos tonight and found that some pups had been relocated from the 5 chamber house to the adjacent 3 chamber house. It has been in the mid 90s here so I guess it got too hot all grouped into one house. The pups are pretty large now
and I am amazed that they could be transported at all. Here is a photo of some pups taken tonight 06/11/2010.
My easy thumbnails made it easy to resize. The pups are down low where they can get some air I believe.

Frank

[LarryH]

That is a great photo! I have also noticed the bats moving among the 3 bat houses, but they seem to have moved all the pups into one house and the other 2 houses are bachelors or females without pups. Our weather has been really strange this year -- we had an early spring with temps in the high 80's and the bats came back earlier than normal, then it turned cool for a couple weeks with daytime highs in the 60's or 70's and I didn't see much activity. Now, we're back into the high 80's or low 90's and they are full maternity mode.

[Terry Lobdell]

My big brown bat maternity colony has been moving almost every day..........the pups look to be about 2/3 the size of the mothers........it is amazing they can carry them.........

[cloudman75]

All my pups have been flying almost two weeks now. They are still here in two houses split about equal numbers.
High today was 98 F but I saw no bats hanging around the bottom to get air so I suppose they are happy.
I am happy to report that I lost no pups from falling out of my bat houses. I have about 6 tiny bats which I still cannot identify but they had pups this year in the bat house. When compared to the little brown pups, they are much smaller even though they are flying. The adult mothers are also easily recognized as smaller. Most of the freetails are missing now, even the pups that were born in my bat houses are not to be seen. I have seen no big browns since it got so hot here in the 90s. I counted the bats last night on exit at 203. Afterthe count, I shined a light up in the houses and both were empty. My unvented house is not being used. My plans now are to leave it for limited use in spring and fall in cool weather. I am building another bat house from an old potato bin my wife discarded. I have the screening in place around the sides with staples. It is about 18 inches x 24 inches and 30 inches high. I plan to build the baffles from soft white wood and scratch them. This one will be heavy and unusal in shape. I will not complete it until winter. It's just made out of junk on hand to see what happens. This one will be very ventilated designed for hot weather and pups.

Frank

[Terry Lobdell]

Frank, I thought you had found out that those small bats were eastern pipistrelles?

One thing nice about building bat houses is you can use up virtually all scrap wood that accumulates........

[cloudman75]

Terry these bats are a different color from the pipistrelles. These have a dark face and darker brown body.
However they could be a color variation. I cannot get a good look at the adults because they mixed in with so many other bats. I check the bat houses most every night around 12 or 1 AM. I am a night owl, also get on my amateur radio late
when Australia and New Zealand are available. The little bats come back around 12PM but the adults stay out later.
I am going to take some photos soon around midnight when individual bats can be viewed. What is a mystery to me is every year about 200 bats leave ,only about a hundred return and have pups. My colony has hit an impasse at about 200.
Perhaps a good photo will reveal that these are pipistrelles and only look dark in the dark bat house. They are cute little fellows. The flying pups are really small, but also small in number.

Frank

[LarryH]

Frank, the description you give of those small bats sounds just like the ones I have seen this year for the first time. I normally, have just Big Browns and Little Browns, but this year I have about a dozen smaller bats with black or dark brown faces and black or dark brown feet/legs. I have decided that they are probably Evening Bats, but I'm not certain of that. I can't get a picture of them due to the height of the houses, but the descritpion you give sounds very much like the ones I've seen.

Right now, most of the bats have left the houses due to the extreme heat we've been experiencing, but I'm sure they'll come back when the weather cools down. The only bats I've seen lately are the pups and their mothers. More of the pups are beginning to go out on their own now, which is fun to watch.

Larry

[cloudman75]

Larry,
These could be evening bats as this is in their range here. I just don't know. I hope to get a good look at one with the camera about midnight or later soon. It was 100 F here today and the freetails are the only ones that left here a week or so ago.
The few Big browns I have seen usually disappear in late April. The little browns are still using my two houses along with about a half dozen of the little bats I wrote about. The pipistrelles had light brown faces and kinda pink on their arms.
These are dark faced with dark arms(wings). I have not seen any pipistrelles that I can identify in a few weeks now.

Frank

[Terry Lobdell]

A couple years ago I had two very small bats roosting tight together..........they looked different than little browns but I eventually concluded they were just a color variation.........Now I am wondering if they were eastern small footed bats?

On the subject of evening bats, I thought they were larger than little browns?

[cloudman75]

Terry,
It depends on which site you read, but I have found that many show around 1/4 oz for an evening bat while little browns often are shown as 1/2 oz weight. I'm not sure the info some of these sites give is correct. Anyway, I don't know
what they are. The young flying pups are very small compared to the little brown pups of about the same age. They could be a younger batch of little browns with a color variation. The box was so crowded that I really could not see the pups clearly until they started flying. They come back after a couple of hours feeding while the adults stay out longer. I have failed so far in my efforts to get a good photo of them in the bat box. I'm glad to have them whatever they are.
In one of my previous post, I mentioned that the small bats I saw may be small footed bats. We are on a similar wave lenght at times.

Frank