In article , "Noctaire"
wrote:

Ok, I'd REALLY like to put up a bathouse in my backyard, but I'm not
thinking there's anywhere I can put it. Just how finicky are bats about the
positioning and location of the house?

James


From an often quoted bathouse leaflet: "A bat house needs to be warm, so
it's important to place it in the sun. A tree is not a good location. The
best place is on the south side of a house, about 15-18' from the ground,
so bats can easily fly in and out, and predators cannot get near them.
Bats also need to be within a 1/4 mile of water, which provides an ample
food source because water attracts many insects."

See the North American Bathouse Research Project webpages:
http://www.batcon.org/bhra/index.html

In some of the local parks, bathouses are mounted on poles in sunny
woodland openings. If anyone is going to build a pole-mounted birdfeeder,
it might be worth extending the height of the pole to 15 or so feet to do
double-duty for a bathouse up top.

Reportedly, bat guano, available in finer garden stores, sprinkled around
the ground below the area of the bathouse, functions as a lure for bats
searching for a residence. While I have some doubt they can really smell
garden guano while flapping around in the sky gobbling down insects, it
wouldn't hurt anything to try it.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/