Little Brown Bats as Summer People

So last May 18 to 22 Little Brown Bats started using the louvers in the eaves on the kitchen side of the house as their daytime roost of choice.  They had 16 to 20 babies (its kinda hard to get an exact count of critters 12 feet up and sleeping all snuggled together in an inch wide space) born during the month.

This little lady decided to sleep hanging outside the louvers so I was able to take her picture.  Most the bats were a bit darker than this one, although there was one that was a much lighter yellow-brown.

These interwebs shots will give an idea of what I could watch in the late evening and early morning hours around my house.    They would leave to go bug hunting starting around 7:30 pm, come and go all night as they tended their young and return for the day just before sunrise.

I would sit on my porch or stand next to my van and watch them leave for the night.  It was like watching a flight deck clear on an aircraft carrier.  The little ones started flights of their own at around 4 weeks of age.  They flew to the trees around my yard and then took short flights to other trees before going back to the louvers.  After a week to 10 days their flights were much longer but they weren’t as acrobatic as their mothers.  They also seemed to stay within easy sight of the roost.

The return flights to the roost were simply awesome to watch.  I’d go outside about an hour and a half before sunup and sit with a cup of coffee in my lawn chair.  The first bats would come from the trees around a 100 yards away to the northeast.  They were still in hunting mode and would do aerials over the yard catching bugs.  There might be 6 to 8 at a time flying over and around each other snatching up bugs.  Then first one than another would fly up to the louvers, hold on for a second and then fly off again for more bugs.  This would go on until just before actual sunrise, then they would land and move into the louvers to sleep. 

Another shot of the Hanging Out Bat

As July moved towards August it got harder and harder to tell the young bats from the mature bats.  By the end of July I could no longer see a clear size or flight style difference.  The morning come in flights just got better and better too.  By the end of July there were as many as 18 bats at once flying over my house and yard, doing the land and takeoff thing and then finally moving into the roost.  Then the numbers started to taper off.  My friend Jane was here by then and she got to enjoy 3 nights and morning of bat flights too but we saw small groups of 4 to 6 bats at once.

Then on the morning of August 2nd I got up to watch the morning flight and there was no morning flight.  Oh a half dozen bats flew out of the woods and over the house but no one came to the roost.  The bats were clearly in hunting mode and were flying over my house and yard like any other looking for bugs to catch.  The young had been weaned, reached adolescence and so the breeding colony had dispersed.  Now it was time to fatten up for the winter and that could best be done by spreading out over a much wider area.  Still I miss watching them en mass and checking on the colony.  I am planning on building a bat house over the winter and putting it in place come spring.