Bat houses

I built a bat house 2 years ago and had it up all last summer, from early spring on. Not a single bat. I live near a stream but Im in town and there are a lot of street lights in my area so I think that might be an issue. I took it down last fall and plan to move it somewhere more appropriate early this spring to see if it gets any action. I was hoping for a local source for guano!

I got no action on my bat boxes until I disturbed their original nesting place. I think bats are fairly loyal and require some serious motivation to look for something new.

Ive thought about capturing some and transplanting them during daylight hours into the bat house. Maybe once they find it and spend a bit of time in there, they might realize its a nice pad…

I wouldn’t recommend capturing and relocating bats, it’s probably illegal and dangerous for you and the bats.

I’m going to give it a go this year, figured it was a good winter project. Still have a few things to do to it, but here is my basic design.

How have others faired? Wish me luck!

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I have a colony of bats that occupy the space between my metal roof and rafters in my barn. Probably between 75 and 100 of them. Im not sure if its the same colony that used to live in a crevice behing my chimney or not. They were forced out of that crevice and it was sealed up. The bats in my barn showed up shortly there after. These are little brown bats. Hit pretty hard by white nose syndrome.
I believe they migrate back to the same locations every spring.
Ive made bat houses in the past, but never put them up on my property. With that colony in the barn, i dont really have a reason to try to move them to a small box.

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We put up a bat house over a year ago. Tried to give it a Southern exposure, and the neighbors have a pond, hopefully close enough for a water supply. No signs of occupation yet.

The tree its in lost its top 2/3rds a couple years ago. Had been well over 100 feet tall.


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