UPDATE 05/27/05 :
My bats are back! I noticed a little bit of Guano under my simple plywood house. From the looks of it, I only have
a single visitor which is common for my houses.
UPDATE 05/20/05 :
I guess I'm getting better. It's been less than a year and a half since my last update! Once again I
had a few bats in my houses and eaves last summer. I expect them to return any day now again. I still
think about getting my temperature probes hooked up once more, but there's only so many hours in the day...
UPDATE 12/13/03 :
It's been two and a half years since I last updated this page. Time files...
I continue to have bat visitors each season. I don't think I get more than one or
two, but I'm happy to have them. I still get more evidence of visitors on the North
side of my house than I do in the actual bat houses that are attached to the South side
of my house. This seems to be contrary to the published advice that I have read. Bats
are supposed to like getting early morning sun, but where my most common visitor resides
up in the eaves there is never any direct sunlight.
UPDATE 06/03/01 :
My bats are back... I first saw signs of bats in both my small bat house and
up in the eaves in mid May. So far their vists have been sporadic, but I'm
hoping that last years permanent resident will return.
Bat wise, I have a little bit
of a mystery going on. I see quite a bit of bat guano on the ground
by the side of my
house, but up above it, I see nowhere where a bat could be roosting.
Hmmm....
On another note, due to some remodeling in the Buzbee house,
my thermometers have been off-line for a few weeks now. Due to logistical
issues, I'm not sure if I will be able to get them going again. :-( Oh
well, I had a continuous plot going from 1998 on....
UPDATE 10/04/00 :
My bat season is over, but it was my most successful yet. I had
occasional residents in my bat houses and a permanent resident
up in the eaves. Here's a picture of my permanent bat taking off
for the evening. I hope he'll return in the spring.
UPDATE 08/12/00 :
Hmmm.... Now I'm really perplexed...
My bat house must be in the wrong neighborhood because all it seems to
attract are transients. A day here, a day there and off they go. But now
I've noticed that I have at least one permanent bat up in the eaves of the Buzbee
house! Don't they know that I built two bat houses just for them? Noooo... they
have to crawl into a little crack in my house. It's even on the wrong side.
The experts tell me that bats like Southern facing roosts that catch the
morning sun, so that is where I placed my bat houses. But the new bats
must not have been listening, because they roost on the North
side of the Buzbee house... My wife likes this arrangement even more.
UPDATE 05/22/00 :
They'rrre Baaaccckkk...
My bats arrived right on schedule last night. Gee, it's just like the swallows
at San Juan Capistrano! My wife is thrilled!
.
UPDATE 11/07/99 : Success!. As you know,
fall is the time to rake the leaves, clean up the garden, and adjust your bat house temperature
probes. So as I was moving them a bit, I noticed guano! This means
that at some point during the summer, my bat house was occupied. Only one
of the two had guano under it. The successful house is Bat House Number 2.
This is the house on the left in the pictures below. It is a very simple design.
Basically just a couple of pieces of plywood with 3/4 inch spacers. It also
has a mesh "landing pad" at the bottom and a vent. I put my first bat house up in 1993,
and I finally have occupants. Maybe next summer, I'll have a Bat-Cam
and a Bat Motion Sensor and, and, and... first I'll have to break
the news to my wife. Her original stipulation was that I could have a
Bat House only as long as it was empty ;-)
UPDATE 05/29/99 : I've got my new temperature probes
from Nexus Computing
hooked up along with a new graph. I think more probes and a better looking
graph will definitely help me attract bats to my bathouses :-)
UPDATE 02/25/99 : My Bat House is back on-line ! It's now
running at 400 Mhz with 128 Meg of Ram and six temperature probes that I can
to hook up ! Six temperature probes ? Did I lose my marbles along with
my Mother Board ? Stay tuned !
UPDATE 01/23/99 : I've had a mother board crash on my Bat House (Don't
you just hate it when your Bat House mother board crashes ?) So, until I
get it fixed, I'll be without a current Bat House temperature ! Is it hot ? Is
it cold ? I don't know !
UPDATE 07/05/98 : Another year has passed
and I still don't think I have any bats in my Bat Houses. I have a hard
time seeing into my newest bat house so it's possible it has occupants.
Thanks to
Tony Messina I have
a bat detector to monitor the area and I have heard bats in my backyard at
night. I just don't know if they use my bat house. I'll keep on monitoring !
UPDATE 06/04/97 : Well, the two years I first described have
stretched to
four, but I'm not giving up ! I signed up with Bat Conservation
International's North American Bat House Research Project, and ordered the
Bat House Builder's Handbook.
My daughter
and I built a new Bat House to the current
specs and are awaiting the arrival of Bats for the Summer. Last night I
saw a bat fly by near the bathouse. It's the first time I've every seen a bat
nearby. My wife is
especially pleased that now we have two Bat Houses hanging on the
side of our House ! Now if I can only get her to sign a purchase req. allowing
me to get another
temperature probe, I can compare
the temperatures between the two...
The Buzbee Bat Houses
Bat House 1 on the right, Bat House 2 on the left, and Buzbee house 1
in the center
From the side. It's possible that the trees you see are interfering
with a clear flight path into Bat House number 1
