About Bats

There are numerous advantages to attracting bats to your neighborhood. They are prodigious insect eaters consuming large quantities of mosquitoes and moths each night. They eat the moths of such garden pest as the corn ear worm, corn root worm, squash vine borer and cutworm.

Bats will either hibernate or migrate depending on species. They will return from migration or awaken from hibernation as early as March in most of the US. In the lower South they may stay active the year round. Bats that hibernate are facing a new deadly threat of white nose disease (a fungi) that can wipe out as much as 80% of colony in a season. This fungi is only active in temps below 68 degrees and does not affect humans.

Out west windmills are killing large numbers of bats - so much for saving the planet. If a bat rocket is set above a compost pile, the guano will help hasten and improve the final product.

Some common bat species which occupy man made housing in the south are: Southeastern Bat (Myotis austroiparius), Evening Bat (Nycticerius humeralis), Eastern Pinstripe (Pipistrellus subflavus), Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus), and Mexican Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis). All of these bats are light to dark brown in color.