Bat House Forum

[BatMan]

There are 3 of them in an Indiana basement.  Original photo lost, see enlargement of original by post from Samuel Wilson below:

[Joe Spencer]

Looks like a Big Brown Bat but the keeled calcar is hard to see in this photo to be definitive.  The tragus which BB's have which is in the ear which the bat uses for echolocation can't be seen and of course the face can't be seen on the above photo which helps distinguish it as well.  Here is an identified photo of a Big Brown BAt.  If you look at the string on the immediate bat below, half way between the knot attached to the foot and the end of the string is the keeled calcar which is a small bone attached near the ankle which extends down on the tail membrane to support it.  Many bats do not have a keeled calcar and some do among which is the Big brown.   UPDATE the link below to the original photo has become unavailable however you can see it enlarged in a post below.

 

[BatMan]

Yeah I know it's not a good photo, my little girl dropped the camera and the zoom doesn't work now. I found them in my grandmas basement (Indiana) when I went up for Christmas, she has a bat problem so I took a 5 chambered bat house with me and installed it on her barn. I'm going back up in the spring or summer to try and get the rest of them out of her house.

She wanted to kill the 3 we found but I told her I would take them with me back home so against my better judgement I drove them down to Florida. The next morning I put them in one of my bat houses where they stayed until dusk and then they flew out. One circled my rocket house a few times and then disappeared. Do you think they will stick around or will they try to get back up north ?

[BatMan]

So what do ya think Joe ?

[Joe Spencer]

This is likely the Big Brown Bat.  The big brown is the most common bat in Indiana.  Big brown's also/often hibernate in buildings and homes.   Re-locating Bats has not usually been succesful.  Bats will often return to their original area.  Not sure what would happen with the distance between Indiana and Florida though.  Too bad we don't have the resources to put a satellite tracking band on their leg.  I wonder if BCI has done anything like the latter?  I can't recall. 

[BatMan]

Now that would be a pretty cool experiment. 930 miles would be a long way for a couple bats to fly. I haven't seen them since they flew out of the bat house but at least they didn't die from a broom.

[cmsquare]

From what I've been told by my local bat biologists in San Diego, big browns do exhibit a high degree of roost fidelity, but it seems unlikely that they could ever find their way back to Indiana. Perhaps if they had flown south themselves they could have navigated their way back home, but since they were driven down and missed seeing/hearing/smelling the route, there's probably no way they could get home. It's unfortunate that she wouldn't let the bats continue their hibernation in her basement, as it would have been too cold to release them to the local elements. There are bat rehabilitators in Indiana who would have overwintered the bats and then released them in the spring.

I hope they find a safe alternate roost in Florida!

cindy m.
http://www.BatRescue.org

[BatMan]

Yeah, I did think about trying to find a rehabber up there but it was Christmas and I found them the night before I was driving back so time was a problem and I knew better than to just let them go, out in the Indiana weather. All considered I did the best I could do for the bats, I just wish they would have stuck around.

 

[SamuelWilson]

I am not too far from you. I am in Tallahassee. I appreciate your effort for the bats. You may have said, but do you have any bats roosting in your bat houses now?

I went ahead an enlarged your photo and lightened it a little bit. Hopefully, everyone can get a better view of it now.



Samuel Wilson [url=mailto:pm_msn@msn.com]pm_msn@msn.com[/url]

 

[BatMan]

Wow nice photo shop job.

No, unfortunately no bats yet.