Want to learn how you can help bats and peacefully co-exist with them? Check out our resources below.
If you’re looking for information on specific types of bats found in Central Texas, visit our Local Species page.
Conflict resolution
Each year we consult with scores of building owners and managers on minimizing bat/human conflict. We perform occasional exclusions in-house, but we normally recommend other professional excluders for most large jobs.
We humans have been sharing our domiciles with bats since the days of the cave people, and bats have always been great neighbors, if simply left alone. They have a great safety record living among humans, way better than that of our beloved household pets. But bats sometimes drop guano in unwelcome spots, say below roof eaves onto pool aprons, or in front of entry doors. That may be a valid reason to ask them to relocate.
Around the world, bats are subject to brutal techniques for their exclusion, usually involving directly killing the bats. We can do better. In the UK, it is illegal to disturb bats roosting in homes or buildings without consultation with a government wildlife professional.
Here in the US, bats have little protection in inhabited buildings, but if they simple have to be relocated, we can minimize harm to bats by following a few simple guidelines. Installing a bat house nearby, months before exclusion, gives them a safe place to hide when the time for exclusion arrives. The exclusion time period should never be during baby season, which varies depending on location and species, or during winter or extended periods of inclement weather.
Our Exclusion Work Featured in Texas Parks and Wildlife Video
This video features our exclusion of a Mexican free-tailed bat colony which had multiple access points in a barn-style home with rustic, live-edge pine siding. It required a combination of carpentry and wildlife skills. The homeowner was newly widowed and needed to sell the house. So our first choice of simply letting the bats stay was not an option, We performed the exclusion at cost, using stiff 1/4″ netting and recycled caulk tubes. Please enjoy some of our rehabilitating bats in the video, the bats looking back at you through the exclusion tubes, and the beautiful Texas sunsets. Nice job on the video TPWD.
Some jobs are relatively simple and can be performed inexpensively by homeowners, with the correct guidance. Normally we advise using exclusion tubes, but netting can be used if done correctly using approved materials. Here’s an example of an exclusion performed by a homeowner on about 40 evening bats that had roosted in the peak of his roof gable.
He did a good job with the netting, but it was installed at the beginning of baby season (mid-May in Houston) (Best practices, however, call for attaching the netting with staples rather than duct tape). After calling us for advice, he agreed to remove the netting until the bat pups in his gable have learned to fly. No one wants baby bats dying in the the walls of their house because their mother can’t return to nurse them. He put up a bat house in the meantime, so that they can identify it as a potential roost, without associating it with an exclusion event. We’re grateful he sought our advice and that he was eager to do the right thing for these bats. We’ll follow up with him when he starts to exclude once the pups of the season are flying, at the beginning of September.
Bats & Buildings brochure
Criteria for Successful Bat Houses
Cajas refugio para murciélagos
For Spanish speakers, we also recommend the Journal of Bat Research & Conservation’s special issue from 2020, “Cajas refugio para murcielagos.” You can download it from SECEMU’s website.
Recognizing the signs of roosting bats
It is usually not necessary to enter an attic, basement, or other area to look for bats in structural voids (the spaces between exterior and interior envelopes of a building). Evidence that bats are occupying voids includes seeing them entering or exiting a roost, staining and guano accumulations near active roost entries, audible roost chatter (high-pitched chirping), a distinct musky odor, or repeatedly finding bats on the ground or roosting on an exterior wall.
The size and shape of bat guano differs among bat species, but what all insect-eating bat guano have in common is the presence of shiny insect parts in the droppings, and the dry, crumbly texture. Bat guano can sometimes be confused with gecko, lizard, frog or rodent droppings. Rodent droppings are similar in color and size, but are hard and not easily crushed. Gecko droppings are soft and easily crushed, but pellets are tipped with white uric acid deposits not found on bat guano.
Education
Bats Live – Prince William Network
Bat Pack – Aussie Bat Resources – Bat Activities
Bat Echolocation Research Handbook 2020 – A handbook for planning and conducting acoustic studies
Organizations we love (in no particular order)
Fly By Night
Wild Things Sanctuary
Austin Batworks
Bat Conservation & Rescue of Virginia
Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation
Bat Conservation International
Bat World
Lubee Bat Conservancy