Last April, I bought two bat houses. When they came in the mail they had strict instructions. The bat house must be at least 10 feet from the ground, they need to face a certain direction preferably in an open area, and they must be in place by mid-April or the bats will not come.
The enticement of natural mosquito control had me up on the ladder 10 feet in the air on THE step, you know the one you're not supposed to stand on, risking life and equilibrium, hugging a 50 foot pine tree with one arm and swinging a hammer with the other. It was truly a life-flashing moment, twice. (Two bat houses, remember.)
Sadly, it was not a case of build it(or in this case scale a ladder) and they will come. The bats apparently had their own real estate agents because they all made other arrangements.
That is why tonight, had you been walking near our place, you would have heard Fin and me yelling at the bat circling our yard that we had a perfectly good bat house, it had been there since mid-April, and the bat was welcome to move in.
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Oh I can only see this all too clearly... did you by any chance offer tea and crumpets as well for the bats? *S* What a great photo, we hear them and see them zoom by in the evenings but never that good! I hope you have renters soon in your homes, I am sure you will be great landlords. - Lu
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the dishes of water put out for them and the light lovingly left on for them too.
ReplyDeleteApril is coming....
Speak of Bats, I see there is a Fin sighting.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Bobby
I thought bats like bat caves. Maybe you need a Robin?
ReplyDeleteThanks Lu, I hope we do too. I'm holding out lots of hope for next April.
ReplyDeleteFin, that's true, I did forget that part.
Bobby, I would never call him a bat in public. :)
CF, true. I'm not giving up the good thought though. Maybe they'll move in after all.
This literally made me laugh out loud. I loved it- and I can picture you scaling a tree and standing on the ladder where you aren't supposed to stand :)
ReplyDeleteThat is a great shot for a batty- They are almost impossibleto capture in flight- We have them all over the place here (no bbathouses) and yet I've never came close to capturing anything but a blur
Glad you got a laugh, Wiz. Those bats are fast little buggers.
ReplyDeleteI love bats, and I'm impressed with the photograph. I hope you get new bat tenants this spring.
ReplyDeleteThanks KIT!
ReplyDeleteI hope they eat your mosquitoes. Do these bats stay in that area year around, or do they migrate, like Austin's Mexican Freetail bats?
ReplyDeleteI hope they too. Apparently, we have 15 different species of bats here in Mississippi but I haven't been able to find any information about range or migration. I suspect that most of the species are non-migrating, but I just don't know.
ReplyDeleteOne brown bat can eat 12,000 mosquito sized insects in an hour. I certainly hope we have some bats move in and that they are primarily interested in mosquitoes!