Bat houses are becoming an important way to help build up the bat population. Let’s explore the reasons you would want a Bat house in your yard.
Benefits of Bat houses
Bats benefit from man-made houses, but so will your family, community and the ecosystem around you.
One of the main reasons placing a bat house in your backyard might benefit your family is to keep them out of your home. Have you ever heard of bats in the attic? It’s a common problem. By placing a house for your neighborhood night crawlers a few hundred yards from your home, you’re more likely to keep them out of the rafters and away from your family.
In addition to deterrence from taking up residence in your roof, bats are extremely proficient at keeping unfriendly insects at bay. Bats eat mosquitoes and many of the most common garden pests. Adding a home for them to your yard or garden will help keep these unfriendly pests at bay. One bat can eat thousands of insects per night!
Bat houses are particularly important to organic gardening, particularly if corn, nuts or tree fruit are being grown. This is because bats love to eat moths which target these types of crops.
Human-Bat contact
Despite what you might be thinking, adding a bat house to your yard–as long as it’s set up properly–actually decreases the likelihood of human-bat contact. This is especially true if the bat box is mounted and maintained properly. The reason this works so well is because it helps to keep bats out of your roof or attic, where someone will eventually need to go in and remove them.
Proper Bat box placement
Once you’ve decided a bat house is for you, make sure it is placed in the right place to help the bats. Follow these guidelines to the placement of your new bat box:
Most bat houses are mounted on the side of a barn or garage. However, pole-mounted houses will attract bats the fastest. Houses can also be mounted on dead or very mature trees.
Regardless of location, make sure the house is mounted 15 to 18 feet off the ground and receives a fair amount of sun each day. Keeping the bats safe from predators and providing a warm nesting place is essential to attracting and maintaining a healthy bat population.
You might be surprised by how many bats will live in one house watch this video and see if you can keep count.
Choose a bat house form BirdhouseSupply.com and enjoy your new bug-busting bat population!
