Green Living
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Bat Houses?
I am helping my sister find ideas for mosquito control in her backyard and really want to try bat houses. I know there was a post some time ago about them, but can't find it now.
Any ideas / suggestions? TIA!
Re: Bat Houses?
Bats are great for mosquito control! If we had any mature trees in our neighborhood, and were allowed to put up a bat house, we would. Here's the one I have my eye on:
I love the idea of bat houses for natural mosquito control! We purchased ours (and got lots of useful info) from the Organization for Bat Conservation: http://batconservation.org/
Sadly, our yard is too shady, and we don't have any location on our house that gets sufficient sun for bats to nest. We painted our bat house black, to increase the warmth from the sun, but... no bats for us
BFP #2: 8/26/12, EDD 5/3/12, M/C 9/4/12
Living Simple Blog
Wow, this is a really informative website, and I love the pictures of the bats
Thanks, you guys, for your recs! If anyone has anything else please let me know. I'll update you if we're successful.
Definitely do it! Bats live in our barn and really help w.the mosquitos.
Although, in our area we have lost a lot to white nose syndrome - so sad
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/fungus_kills_90_percent_of_nj.html
http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/disease_information/white-nose_syndrome/
so we don't have nearly as many bats as we did 3 years ago. This summer we have seen more than last year, so hopefully that is a good sign!
Good luck everyone! I have heard that sometimes it can take a few years for bats to find and colonize a good house, even if it's properly located.
It makes me happy to see other people interested in bat houses. We offered ours to a few friends (who DO get enough sun in their yards), and they all declined because they're scared of/disgusted by bats
speaking of bats, i believe we have some living in our attic. i can honestly say that i've never seen a bug in our home in the 2 years we've lived here.
what are the dangers of having bats living in your attic? i've heard their poop can be harmful if inhaled. anyone have to deal with this before?
I have been obsessing about getting a bathouse for a few weeks! Here is my crazy concern, though. I am worried about the poop. The best place to put a BH in my yard is either above where we come out of the garage, or above where the dogs would have access to the poop dropping from the BH.
Is there that much poop under the BH that I have to worry?
Wish my neighbors would put one up. lol. Hell, I'd even buy it.
There will defitinely be bat poop around the bat house. We have a ton of bats at our place. I love that they keep the bugs the down, but hate all the bat poop. We're planning on trying to "rehome" the bats away from our house by putting up bat houses around our property.
This past winter, our cat would sit in the living room and stare at the wall. We thought she was crazy for the longest time, until we heard scratching and high pitched squealing. We did a closet renovation on our 2nd floor, and found a couple bats in the attic behind the closet. I put them in a box in the basement, which they escaped from, because I didn't have the heart to throw them outside in the below-zero temperature. There has been a window open down there since spring, so hopefully they found their way out.
We need to put a screen up, since we saw the hole they were coming in through. I would love to get (or make) a bat house for them. I'm afraid if they go into someone else's attic they will be killed.