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LarryH
Member
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Posted: Tue Apr 3rd, 2007 01:27 pm |
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Yesterday afternoon I was cleaning up the weeds, etc., under the bat houses and noticed a lot of droppings from Big Brown's. So, I decided to go out and watch the emergence at dusk. I counted 13 Big Brown's emerging from one house and 4 from the other house. Later, I looked up into the houses with a flashlight and saw two bats hanging inside one of the houses near the bottom opening.
We have been having unusually warm weather for the past several weeks, but it is supposed to turn colder with the low's in the 20's for the next 4 or 5 days. That will drastically affect the number of bugs available for food for the bats, I'm afraid.
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Joe Spencer
Administrator
| Joined: | Mon Feb 11th, 2002 |
| Location: | Massachusetts USA |
| Posts: | 509 |
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Offline
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Posted: Tue Apr 3rd, 2007 10:24 pm |
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Neat thing about big browns is that they are quite hardy. They can go into a daily torpor as necessary which is not as deep as during hibernation of course but which they use as necessary to conserve precious fat reserves often during extreme temperature fluctuations as experienced during the spring and fall. In the name of Science I saw where they froze big brown bats in freezers at various temperatures and the results were quite amazing. The bat would raise its internal temperature just enough to survive just barely above freezing to prevent cell damage but not too much as to use fat reserves excessively to burn out before emerging from hibernaculum. If your bats got to eat a little before this cold spell, they should be just fine or may elect to relocate to a slightly warmer temporary roost to wait out the temporary temperature decline. I got a hint of your recent central U.S. weather temps from watching a Boston RedSox game vs the KC Royals mentioning it was in the 80's there while we've been quite cold in MA the last few days. 
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Terry Lobdell
Member
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Posted: Wed Apr 4th, 2007 01:39 am |
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| Had a high of 75 here today in nw pa. As of last night I had at least 10 big browns in one house and 2 in another......very chilly last night but tonight they are out flying around!
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LarryH
Member
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Posted: Tue May 8th, 2007 06:54 am |
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We're finally back home, and I went out to check the Purple Martins and bats to see how much changed in the 3 1/2 weeks we were gone. I noticed a lot a guano beneath the bat houses. I would estimate that about 75% of it is Big Browns and the rest is Little Browns.
Before leaving on our trip, I put up a new smaller, double chamber house for them to use as a nursery. I wasn't sure if it would get any bats since it only about 14' off the ground, and is mounted on the south side of a sheet metal barn. But, I saw some guano beneath it. All of the guano looked like it was from Big Browns, but it was hard to find since there was heavy grass below the house. I looked up inside the house, and found 3 Big Browns in there. I did not see any pups, but it is a little early yet.
I watched the bats emerge from the main houses this evening, and counted 112 of them emerge. It is good to see so many back already.
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KC5TPA
Member
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Posted: Tue May 8th, 2007 12:21 pm |
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I envy you.
I am still @ zero.
67 last month, and zero for about a week and a half now.
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Terry Lobdell
Member
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Posted: Tue May 8th, 2007 08:37 pm |
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| I counted 39 little browns emerge out of one house last night........I am going to try to count my big browns tonight........I think I might have around 20 of them..........Don't worry KC, they will be back at some point!
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kent borcherding
Member
| Joined: | Fri Jan 7th, 2005 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 50 |
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Posted: Fri May 11th, 2007 07:59 pm |
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kc ,
The 67 bats you had last month were probabbly migrating bats goint to their summer habitat.
Bats when they leave winter hibernaculm do not go directly to their summer hibernaculm , but make some stops enroute.
If the bats were free trails which do not enter hibernaculms but migrate , the free tails were also enroute to summer roost.
There have been some drawn out, expensive , many man hour studies on bats leaving the winter hibernaculms and going to summer roosts. The conclusion was, after spending thousands of dollars and a lot of man hours, bats stop at different roosts enroute to summer hibernaculms.
Then there was the simple bat house builder , I won't mention any name , and a bat excluder study . Several cans of food grade colored food spray in an areasol cans.
Next went to and entered several larger bat hibernaculms early spring when
the bats were arousing to leave the hibernaculms. Sprayed the orange food grade spray on several clusters of bats.The bats do not have to be netted and banded which can be very stressful to bats
Waited several weeks and checked different sites where bats were known to roost in early spring , saw a number of the orange colored bats ,
Several weeks later checked the same sites bats and left those sites , after stopping at sometimes to more roosting sites the bats arrived at summer roosts and stayed all summer at those sites.
The orange color spray was all gone from the bats within a month and no problems with the pups in the maternity colonies of the food grade spray.
Might add same conclusive results from the under $100 study as the many thousands dollar scientific study. Main thought is bats were saved from stress of netting.
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Terry Lobdell
Member
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Posted: Wed May 23rd, 2007 01:44 am |
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Here's a couple questions about some observations I had tonight:
I counted over 50 little browns coming out of one house tonight.
There were fewer little brown bachelors scattered in my other houses. Last week they appeared to have separated.
Would the bachelors have come back and roosted with the females since there are no pups yet?
And if you have a certain number of females does that mean there is an equal number of males?
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LarryH
Member
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Posted: Thu May 24th, 2007 01:31 am |
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I have been able to watch the bats emerge almost every evening, and the numbers seem pretty conssitent every night. Between the two big houses, there are over 150 bats each evening. Over half of them are Big Browns, and the rest are Little Browns. For about a week, we had more bats but they are apparently gone now. There must have been some migrating ones that stopped over for a while.
I have not seen any bats emerge from the new nursery house I put up this year, but when I shined a light up inside of it tonight I saw 5 little brows in there. There may have been more higher up in the house that I couldn't see them. I wonder if they are females getting ready to give birth? They were still in there after dark, which surprised me.
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LarryH
Member
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Posted: Mon May 28th, 2007 02:02 am |
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Today, I found 2 babies in the nursery house. I'm so glad to see they are using the new house I put up this spring.
I posted pictures of the house in the Photos section of the forum. It is a simple, single-chamber house, but I wanted to get something up for them.
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