Bat House Forum

[Dave Miller]

Just thought I'd start a thread for people to share their best personal encounter with bats.  i.e. what have been your most memorable (good or not) interactions with bats?

Here are a couple of mine:

1. In a swimming pool

Last summer I went with my daughter's 6th grade class on their end of the year party.  We went to a nearby camping resort in the woods, which had an indoor pool.  While we were swimming, a little brown bat dropped from the ceiling and began skimming the surface of the pool.  I had never seen a bat so close (12" from my face) during daylight.  It was really cool.  Of course most of the kids freaked out and left the pool, but about 1/3 of them stayed and thought it was really neat to have the bat circling them.  It was great to actually see it drinking, close up, right at its level.

2. Twilight on the lake

Every time we are camping near water, I like to go down to the water's edge just after the sun goes down, to listen for bats with my bat detector.  After a while I shut off the detector and just watch them in amazement, how quickly they move without making a sound.  One time we were out on the lake in a kayak at twilight, which was really neat because they were flying all around us.

[Rick]

I have a few interesting bat encounters.My favorite was while I was fishing on a private lake a few years ago. It was getting toward evening and my friend and I were slamming into some really nice Hybrid stripped bass. It was evening and just heading toward dusk.I noticed a big Brown bat flying about the lake. It flew close to a little leaf Linden tree that happend to have a KingBird in it. True to the kingbirds nature he went after the bat. There was an areial scuttle like I never seen before.Flying mammal vs Bird. They were tussling over the water seeming locked in some odd sort of dog fight the king bird twittering the whole time.To me the bat seemed completely surprised but he didnt run like most birds seem to do from a encounter with a King bird. they seemed to lock up fluttering down to the water a few times before they equally released each other before they hit the waters surface. They then parted ways and went about their business.

[Joe Spencer]

Years ago I was at a 4-H club. I was helping them with their bat situation.  It was very early on in my bat endeavors.  Bats sometimes congregate with a little warmup swarm/flying in an area before heading out to forage.  I decided to have fun with it.  People outside thought they were looking at a madman when I stood inside the barn waiting for the majority of a large nursery colony of myotis lucifugus (which easily exceeded 100 bats) totally immerse themseleves inside the barn flying around me.  Just wanted to prove to them that not one bat would touch me.  It was like heaven to a new bat enthusiast.  It lasted for about 2-3 minutes before the bats started to leave the barn to forage.  When I walked out the people looked at me as if I was lucky I'd been spared!  I told them I'm not on their diet but had I been a flying insect or ignorant about bats I would have been petrified! :calmhappy:

[Terry Lobdell]

My best bat encounter was last summer, July of 2005. I get home from work late, around midnight and always look for my bats circling my house.

I had recently had a pole light installed and had been enjoying the 2 or 3 bats flying around it each night. On this night I stood under the light while around 6 little brown bats fluttered all around me, coming as close a 12 inches from my head. It was like being in the middle of a bunch of butterflies the way they zigged and zagged all around me. I could feel the breeze from their wings as they fluttered past my face. It seemed like I was in the middle of probably ten bats but I think they just appeared more numerous because of their acrobatics.

It was just an awsome experience to have on a warm quiet summer night!

[LarryH]

I had a similar experience last summer, in mid-July.  I posted some pictures in the Photo forum of the bats circiling under the yard light mounted on the top of our garage.  We were packing our travel trailer for a trip, and it had gotten late at night -- close to midnight - when, suddenly there were bats everywhere.  The June Bugs were out in numbers, and the Big Brown Bats were having a free buffet.  I was standing about 15' from the light, and the bats were flying right past me in pursuit of a June Bug.   I witnessed one where there was a June Bug flying towards the light, and suddenly a bat came up behind the June Bug and grabbed the bug from behind and then went nearly straight up and out of sight.

A funny sidebar to the bats getting the bugs under the light, is that in past summers every mornng I could look out towards the garage and see Mocking Birds on the ground cleaning up the bugs that had hit the light the night before and fell to the ground.  Last summer, though, after getting the bats in our houses, there were no bugs left on the ground for the Mocking Birds.

We also have a couple Purple Martin houses, I get to watch the Purple Martins during the day and the bats at night.  The best of both worlds!

  

[Terry Lobdell]

I just had an interesting experience tonight around 12:30am. I was checking some bat houses I have mounted near a small pond and noticed 3 little browns flying and darting up towards the bat houses and back away again without entering. It almost seemed like they were playing. At first they were flying up towards the entrance then back away without touching. Then they began touching either the landing strip or the baffles before darting away. As this game progressed, they began to grab ahold more. Then they actually went up inside 2 or 3 inches before crawling back out and exiting once again. Finally all three of them entered for good. I'm guessing each bat made maybe 10 of these practice approach/landings before entering for good. This was an amazing experience because I was standing right below the 2 back to back mounted (east/west oriented) houses and got a really good view of them landing. They didn't seem at all bothered by my presence or my light. The entrances are about 14 feet off the ground. They fluttered past me close enough I could feel the breeze from their wings.

From my exit counts at dusk the past week and guano accumulations it appears that the bachelors have separated from the females and are roosting separately. I'm guessing these were bachelors. There were already 2 in the west box when I saw these 3 darting around.

Last year I saw some big browns doing the same thing and thought they were having trouble grasping ahold trying to land but maybe it was the same kind of behavior. Has anyone else ever observed behavior like this?

[Joe Spencer]

Terry, it realy is neat!  I first observed this behaviour years ago in the wee hours myself in my yard on the bat houses I had mounted on a tree and then on/in a bat house on my home .  Below is an excerpt from a BCI wind turbine pdf that may shed some light on "investigative behaviour".  Maybe bats are indeed doing a safety check for predators which could arrive to surprise them in their absence?  Who knows.  I remember I only had two bats in one of my bat houses which was mounted on the gable end of my house.  On the opposite side of the wall was my bed and I could hear the bats landing on the bat house and then momentarily later hear the landing clunk again.  I'd get 10 or more of these sounds for just two bats?  Can't wait to get a camera in a bat house some day..

BCI:

We also observed a wide variety of investigative behavior by bats. Bats often make
several check passes before alighting on and entering roost structures such as trees and buildings.We often observed bats making check passes or flying repeated loops near moving blades. In 4 separate instances, we also observed bats executing check passes and briefly alighting on the monopole itself. This usually occurred at approximately one-half to two-thirds of the height ofthe hub. This behavior was particularly well illustrated in one instance when an individual bat............

I entered this (use quotes) into google and found above:  "bats alighting" 

[IowaNate]

 My best bat experience was at the Nature Center where I have bat houses on an elevated deck. When on the deck, the houses are only a foot above my head. A short while after dusk, when the bats had left for an hour or so, they came back and circled the house. I had up to 30 bats within arms reach of me for about 15 minutes. I could hear the fluttering wings and some of the high pitched chattering. I can't quite describe the feel of the wind from their wings on my skin, the deck light was just a few feet away so I could see most of the bats very clearly as they gracefully swooped and caught their prey. A few even landed on the back of the bat house for a few seconds to give me a close up view of them perched before they flew off into the night sky again.

     I am so fortunate that I have the ability to enjoy this spectacle a few nights a year when I check the nursery count on these houses.

[Erik]

That's a difficult question. My Best Bat Encounter? I had a couple of great bat encounters here in The Netherlands, but I guess I experienced My Best Bat Encounters on a holiday in Costa Rica in December 2004.

In one of the dry forests near Liberia my travel companion Rudy and I discovered a small cave. We could smell the guano outside and could hear the soft squealing of bats. We had to crawl on our knees to get inside and were a bit afraid of encountering a snake or a scorpion or something else dangerous.
Inside the cave it was really dark but we could just see thousands of bats hanging on the ceiling and a lot of bats flying around. There were Glossopaga species, Carollia species (short tailed bats) and even a Pteronotus species. Looking around we could see a lot of bat guano laying around on the ground. But we also saw a little black / brown pool of something that looked like tar. My heart started beating very fast because I already suspected what is was. Carefully we pointed our torch towards the ceiling of the cave where there was a small alcove. And there they were! A group of about 15-20 Common Vampire Bats! They were (of course) very shy and afraid of the light and most of them crawled back out of our sight. But one of them , we could observe for minutes and I took this neat picture of it. It even looks like it is smiling back at us!

 

We also encountered a lot of other species of bats in Costa Rica but I guess this is my Best Bat Encounter of that holiday and also so far.

Erik
 

[Joe Spencer]

Thanks for sharing Erik.  I'm amazed that for all the negative publicity and ignorance about them that it is ironic that they are one of the few bat species which will take in an orphaned pup.  Nice photo Erik....:thumbsup1: