Bats

Bat Video Clips

-Myotis Bat Eating Mealworms

Silver-haired Bat - A Solitary Bat

Bats are an important part of a complete eco-system for your backyard wildlife habitat because they consume many bugs and mosquitoes. According to Bats, Man-Made Roosts, and Mosquito Control by Merlin D. Tuttle, some bats can eat 500 to 1,000 mosquitoes in an hour.

Bat Lore

In China, a bat brings happiness. This little night wanderer is often shown in quintuplicate. Each bat represents a blessing, that of wealth, health, love of virtue, old age, and a wish for death by natural causes. Why a bat? In Chinese, the word for bat is fu, and is identical to the sound of the word for good fortune.

Bats in Waldport, Oregon

Bat Houses

Three Bat Houses

In the above photo, there are three bat houses; two of which are nursery bat houses. If you are interested in building a nursery bat house, check out Bat Conservation International for detailed instructions on building your own nursery bat house or purchasing one of theirs.

For 30 years, we have observed bats around our properties and have found many bats lying flat rather than hanging when resting or sleeping. They especially love living under cedar shakes. So, we designed a shake bat house (see the center bat house in the above picture). In this design, the bats crawl up the plastic bat screen to the top of a shake where there is a ledge. This ledge allows the bat plenty of room to lie flat.

Besides bats living in our bat houses, we've found solitary bats, such as the Silver-haired bat, living in the roofs of the flicker houses and in Barn Swallow artificial nest cups.

Myotis Bat Eating Mealworms

In March of 2006, we had an unusually cold late winter storm causing a bat to fall out of one of our bat houses. Using heavy gloves, the rehabilitator immediately put the bat in an enclosure to keep it safe from raccoons and other animals. Once the bat was warm, it readily ate mealworms building up its strength so it could be released back into the wild.

If you find a bat, please go Bat World's Local Rescue. From there, you can click on your state and locate a Bat Rehabilitator.

Bat Bootcamp

If you want to add to your rehabilitator education, check out Rehab Training where you can attend Bat World Boot Camp. They have a 5-day intensive hands-on training in bat rehabilitation. Included in the cost of the workshop is Amanda Lollar and Barbara Schmidt-French's exceptional book entitled Captive Care and Medical Reference for the Rehabilitation of Insectivorous Bats. This book is the "Bat Bible" - a must have reference book.

Bat Poster with Bat Facts

The Endangered Species Recovery Program has a free poster called, Bats of the Western United States. The poster has 35 species of bats along with "Bat Facts" on the back of the poster. Also included on the poster is information on size, distribution, behavior, food habitats and more. There is a $5.00 fee to cover postage for orders within the U.S.

Tell eBay To Stop Selling Slaughtered Bats!

Several companies are catching bats in the wild and killing them for sale as "art" in glass frames. One small bat, also known as the Short-nosed fruit bat, is a major target of this cruel practice. The fruit bat is an important pollinator and seed dispenser, and has a status of vulnerable.

Bats already face severe threats due to habitat loss. Killing additional bats for personal collections only leads to further decline of wild bat populations.

Fruit and nectar-eating bats are responsible for hundreds of economically important products including foods, drinks, medicines, timber, fibers, dyes and fuel. Wild varieties of many of the world's most economically valuable crop plants, such as bananas, rely on bats for survival. Insect eating bat species are natural enemies of night-flying pests that damage crops, reducing the need for chemical pesticides. Sign the Bat Petition!

Bat Links

Some other favorite bat links are Bat Conservation International and Bats Northwest.