kai

So I've got a mosquito problem in my back yard (San Antonio). Or had one last year, and I got bit today, so I'll assume it'll be the same this year. I don't believe in pesticides, so I'm not spraying my yard or anything like that (whats worse- west nile virus or cancer? hmmm... I'm young- I'll choose west nile). And I got to thinking...

At home (New England), we have bats in my yard and not many mosquitos. I remember seeing some bat houses at Eisenhower Park in San Antonio. Has anyone put a bat house in their yard, or does anyone know of anyone who has done this? was it sucessful? There is plenty of food around here for those little guys. And i have such wonderful memories of throwing tennis balls in the air at night and watching the bats rush it (which I wouldn't do now, of course ).

Shannon

We have the occasional bat here in our backyard, and very little mosquito problems. I do have one or two of those OFF! Mosquito Coils stashed in the pantry, just in case (citronella smoke, basically.)

I've always wanted to buy a bat box and attach it to our house or something, but I've not yet gone all the way with that idea. I'm not sure my neighbors would be keen on it, if they saw a bat ingressing/egressing the box. Still, it'd be nice to have them so closeby and maybe I'm weird, but I like hearing the audible range of their echolocation clicks. I remember the camping trip to Big Bend where as much as I loved watching the bats, I finally had to retreat after a half hour to the canvas walls of the pop-up trailer because it was slightly unnerving how close the bats (multiples of them, not just one) were flying by my ears, repeatedly. Hard to stargaze when you're trying to suppress your reflex to flinch/duck!

The Wild Bird Center sells some nice bat boxes, and anyone handy with wood (that would not be me, or Justin for that matter {Sorry, hon!}) could probably create one just as good for a fraction of the price.

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kai

Yea- i was just looking at bat box building instructions on line (my husband is pretty handy, luckily. so am I for that matter, I suppose). One thing to be careful of is that they need to fit a bunch of specifications, or otherwise the bats might not move in and you'll get frustrated

http://www.batcon.org/bhra/index.html has links to bat house instructions, and explains their commercial bat house certification program (which I haven't read- I'm building mine).

criteria for sucessful bat houses

As for the neighbors, well... I don't much think they like me much anyway. I get the distinct impression that we are the weird young yuppie couple that is - gasp- interracial We have one of those reel-push lawn mowers, and aren't too concerned with the lawn. In fact, I refuse to water it no brownie points there. And we installed a solar panel on our roof for our attic vent fan- I think thats even against the neighborhood association rules, but oh well. We do know some of them, and the one I do know well is pretty cool- I think I could reason with her about the benefit of bats. She's good like that- pretty down to earth and reasonable.

I'd like to find a group of bat house owners in the central texas area to see how it worked for them. Or start one if none exists. It'd be interesting to see how everyones results compared.

jeff parker

Check out http://www.batcon.org/ based in Austin.