Every evening, like clockwork, the moment that the sun sets over the horizon and the sky is streaked with deep pinks, oranges, and the start of the navy blue night, dozens of bats start swooping and diving in the tree-tops outside of our apartment windows.
They come from hidden corners in the eaves of buildings, and increasingly, from the Bat Houses installed on more and more of our neighborhood's apartment buildings. Nature's best mosquito repellent, brown bats eat hundreds of mosquitoes and mosquito-sized insects an hour, and their dwindling population can mean a population explosion in the insect world. Since we are not comfortable using insect repellent on kids, we are embracing a more natural method of insecticide!
The Organization for Bat Conservation offers both pre-made bat houses and the plans to build your own. They are very easy to install, and are designed to protect bats and give them a safe haven.
Below is a bat house, fully loaded! The Bat Conservation gives helpful hints about where to place your bat house, for maximum effect.
After having accidentally had a few bats swoop through our windows and do laps around the dining room table for a few days, we suggest also keeping the bat house away from large, open windows!
We won't lie - these aren't particularly adorable creatures - but they are beautiful to watch fly, and more importantly, we almost never see mosquitos in the neighborhood, and can't remember the last mosquito bite we had, and that makes the bat houses well worth it! We would much rather have bats than be covering the kids in insect repellent.
I built a bathouse a couple of years ago based on a Univ. of MO design, we have a bat that lives in our doorless garage, but the bathouse is still vacant. I love to watch them flutter around at dusk though (like big moths).
view Jon_B's profile
I bought a bat house from big box home improvement store and LOVE it. It does help cut down on the bugs. My son even has a stuff bat that he loves.
view molly_DC's profile
what urban area do you live that you have bats? I've never seen them in NYC but I would love to encourage them if possible. There's no reason why there shouldn't be bats here, right? (I've seen them farther north and farther south.)
view Eliza's profile
Eliza, I've seen bats in Central Park. Don't know how healthy the population is - haven't seen many.
view Sea's profile
Eliza, I am in Chicago (the city proper, not the 'burbs), and until I knew when to look, and where, I never saw a bat. They are impossible to see once it gets dark - they move too fast, and too erratically. But now I know where to look, and it helps that we have both the little brown bats, and the 12" wingspan ones, which are easier to spot!
I don't know NYC at all, but this blog post seems to suggest that there are bats in the area.
http://meanderthal.typepad.com/dope/2006/07/bat_watching.html
And someone got a great photo!
http://meanderthal.typepad.com/dope/2006/07/bat_watching_ii.html
I love them! I bet I haven't had more than 5 mosquito bites in the last 5 years, and I am gardening every day.
view kristin's profile
You can see bats in Central Park or Riverside (and probably all the other Manhattan parks) at dusk, swooping and darting at tree level. You might not interpret what you're seeing as "bats" right away, as their forms are bird-like. But their flight patterns are very different: they move like drunken, weaving birds. I see them most evenings. I wish there were more: the mosquitoes love me.
view gothamgal's profile
They look like big moths.
view Jon_B's profile
most cases of rabies in the US are from bats and often kids don't know they've been bitten at all. it's stupid to encourage bats to live near you (so close they flew in your house!) if you have children.
view snot's profile
oh, that's very cool. And thanks for that link, Kristen! I live not far from there.
Now I wonder how I could hang a bat house off the side of my building... somehow I doubt it'd go over well with the condo board... :(
view Eliza's profile
Bats rabies, not really an issue:
http://www.batcon.org/home/index.asp?idPage=91&idSubPage=62
view tinychoices's profile
I disagree and think bat rabies is an issue - a bat conservation group tells us only one death a year - i am sure that if that statistic is true, that one person's family is probably thinking it's an issue too. Why would you want to take the chance at all if you have children around?!
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/rabies/bats_&_rabies/bats&.htm
read about the 4-year old that didn't know she got bit and died or rabies.
I stick to my opinion that it's stupid to encourage bats to live with you when you have kids.
view snot's profile