Bat House Forum

[bohningr]

I was speaking to a friends wife the other day.  She has weird interests, like me, so I thought she might find it interesting that I am putting up a bat house.  She then tells me that her friends, friends, ex paperboy (or some other equally odd connection) is a trapper.  A trapper in the sense that he gets nuisance wildlife out of people's homes.

So, this guy is the only guy licensed in the county to remove bats.  And once he removes bats, he needs a place to put them (he's not allowed to kill them, apparently).  So, my friend's wife says to give her a shout so the guy can drop off his transplant bats at my house.

She then tells me that she can also get fresh guano as well, from yet another source.

So, some questions:

1) Assuming this guy actually will show up at my house with a bag-o-bats (and that assumption is suspect), do you think that would be a way to get the bat house populated?

2) Do you think putting some quano on or around the bat house would help attract bats?

Let me know what you think

Rick

[Terry Lobdell]

Bats have a strong homing instinct and are widely known to return to their previous territory.

A lot of people have tried smearing guano in and around new bat houses but there is little evidence that it works.

The best thing I have found is to mount a bat house that has been previously used. When I have done this with bat houses that have a lot of urine staining on the landing pad I have been very successful in attracting bats quickly.

If you look at my pictures on here you will see I have many bat houses mounted to my house. They all get used intermittently. The ones with rough sawn wood baffles actually have quite a few guano pellets sticking inside even though they have only been used by bachelors.

Because I have so many bat houses, I can easily remove a few throughout the year to mount elsewhere and the bats don't miss them.

One bat house I mounted this year was used the very first night and now has had an exit count of 36 little browns just a couple weeks ago.

Those are all good questions you have........you could try spreading some fresh guano on the ground.....who knows, it might work.........

If I were you, I would get a small bat house and mount it near where there is a large colony. Once the bats have used it enough to have visible urine stains take it back and mount it where you want to attract bats. That may be the quickest way.

[Terry Lobdell]

Here is a link to a picture of the bat house that was occupied the first night it was put up. It's the house on the right with the bat stenciled silhouette.

http://www.batnic.org/forum/forum5/504.html