Over four years ago I put up a bat house in our back yard…
… but did any bats move in? Nope. I thought it might be due to the disease that’s decimating the bat population around here, but then, while cleaning out the gutters, I found a bat.
A dead one. Not due to the disease, but trapped as it tried to escape from behind a bedroom window shutter. I loosened the shutter, pulled out the unfortunate winged mammal, and tossed it into the woods.
If that bat had been alive, I might have been inspired to put on a cape and cowl, and fight crime!
Yeah, I wouldn’t have touched the carcass, either! Live bats on the ground could be sick with something you might catch… after all, they shouldn’t be there, so something is wrong… and who knows for sure whether a dead animal was healthy or sick before it died.
BTW, behind window shutters are favorite bat roosting places. I once had a neighbor who was preparing to paint his house. As he began to take down one of the 2nd floor window shutters, he saw a live bat start to fly out, and he literally leaped off the ladder down to the ground, landing on the foot of his wife who was holding the ladder. : ( …I guess it’s a good idea to bang on shutters with a broom handle or other long stick, to chase out any bats before removing the shutters. Ya never know…! My neighbor is lucky he didn’t get hurt…nor his wife, whom I’m sure was less than pleased by the sudden surprise, as well!!
The bat house is 16-ft. off the ground and is facing south. BTW, I pulled the dead bat out with a screwdriver and picked it up with shovel.
I can’t remember details, but I think there are “specs” that should be observed for bat houses, just like for putting up Purple Martin bird houses and the like. The bat house might have to face a particular north/south/east/west direction, be at a certain height, etc. I think Purple Martins even want a certain length of unobstructed flight path to their bird house. Maybe bats have a similar requirement. It’s all in the literature; sometimes those instructions come with the purchase of the bat or bird house.
Sounds fussy, doesn’t it? But then, so are we when we go looking at houses, right?!! Location, location, location…and “curb appeal” mean a lot to US for “Home Sweet Home,” after all. Maybe you did all the “right” things… but it just didn’t happen for reasons unknown to us. At any rate, you get 5 STARS for trying, Doug!
I’ve had neighbors get the heebie jeebies when I once said I was going to put up a bat house. But northeastern U.S. bats are great for eating flying insect pests that bother humans. I had to tell my neighbor that it’s an old wives’ tale that bats get tangled up in your hair. Bats’ sonar makes them extremely agile flyers, so the most that would happen is that they might grab a mosquito in mid-air that is hovering above you in general area. Bats in warmer climates eat a lot of fruit, and they will also visit hummingbird nectar feeders at night.
I think there’s only one specie of bat that drinks blood. I saw video footage of a bat doing that to a chicken’s leg. The chicken was roosting on a perch, and didn’t even wake up from the tiny nick made by the bat’s teeth! The bat lapped a few drops, flew away, and that was the end of it. No big deal!!!