OT: No bats this year

TomH in PA · Jun 18, 2011

There were always a lot of bats around here in the summer. They'd stay in some of the outbuildings during the day and fly all over the place in the evening.

Last year it seemed there were fewer than normal. This year I haven't seen any. Looks like this epidemic wiped them out. Strange to see it happen so quickly.
Bat syndrome

Bruce from Can. · Jun 18, 2011

I had not heard of this before this evening at a BBQ some folks where talking about bats once it got dark. So your post, and the info, was most timely for myself . Thank you.

toadady · Jun 18, 2011

still gots them , seen them tonight while waiting on the fox

Ludwig · Jun 18, 2011

Strange, I've been thinking we've got an unusually large number of bats this year. Of course its been really wet and we've got a lot of bugs too.

Anonymous-0 · Jun 18, 2011

We still see them in the evening at dark. There are fewer of them. In addition to barns they roost in the bark of shagbark hickory which we still have in our wooded hills down here.(So IN) Fence row & woods clearing hurts their population if have hickory in them. Losing some old barns every year to storms etc. They used to eat gobs of insects that worked on farmers crops in summertime.

JDseller · Jun 18, 2011

I have a colony that has lived in the attic of the house for at least fifty years. My Grand father built a bat house into the north end of the attic. We see them all of the time. You can set on my deck in the evenings and not be eat up by bugs. My grand father could click his finger nails together at the right pitch and the bats would dive at him. I could never do it.

I know many would kill them or drive them off but I feel that God had a plan when he put them here. So I just go to a little trouble to keep them going. It is fun to watch them raise their young ones. Got several hornets nest in the wood and more bee hives(wild ones) than I can count.

I hope that some imported disease does not kill the bats off. The bees really got hit hard here a few years ago but seem to have came back around. I am not a tree hugger but I feel it takes all of God"s creatures to make this world work. So I try to disturb as little as possible while still producing a living from the land.

ChrisinMO · Jun 18, 2011

We've got two bats (at least) that spend the summers near our farm. I kind of like seeing them doing their thing. It makes me feel like I might be doing something useful. When we first came here, at least for the first three or four years, we hardly ever saw a barn swallow. Now, out working in the afternoons there are always lots of swallows about.

I've had my nose to the grindstone so long this year, I've not even taken any time to look at the bats in the evening. Perhaps I have been working too much and need to ratchet it down a notch or two. No use missing summer by being too busy!

Christopher

DanR · Jun 19, 2011

The decline of bat populations is real. So is the bee population. The use of pesticides has been linked to both. A bat must have insects to feed on and will move to another area to get food. Insects that have built an immunity to certain pesticides are store houses for chemicals that can be detrimental to bats.

TomH in PA · Jun 19, 2011

From what I read, White Nose Syndrome is a disease that was brought over from Europe. Bats over here don't have any natural resistance to it; European bats carry the fungus but it doesn't kill them. Didn't see anything about pesticides.

Regarding bees, the scientists think it's a combination of a virus and another pathogen, also probably brought in from somewhere else in the world.

OT: No bats this year

TomH in PA

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Bruce from Can.

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toadady

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Ludwig

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Anonymous-0

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JDseller

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ChrisinMO

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DanR

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TomH in PA

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