Chiroptera Monthly
a newsletter for citizen scientists
April bat news!
Porter County Chapter welcomes the new Bat Adopters. We are up to nearly 200 families in the Bat Adoption Program. Bats sure need our protection during these times. Like any wild animal, bats can carry disease, but if we leave them to themselves, they are the best pest control nature can give us.
REMEMBER, DON'T EVER TOUCH A BAT (DEAD OR ALIVE).
SEEK PROFESSIONAL AND HUMANE ADVICE IF YOU NEED TO MOVE BATS (see below). If you find an injured bat in Porter County, call Humane Indiana Wildlife for the steps to take to help it.
nipsco environmental action grant
IWLA-PCC is the recipient of $5K from the NIPSCO Environmental Action Grant to support the expansion of our current Bat Monitoring and Habitat project. The expansion would provide monitoring and habitat equipment for 7 new partner locations in NW Indiana. They will receive a Rocket Box (bat house) to be monitored full time in bat season with bat call audio recordings taken by AudioMoth equipment.
citizen science time!
'BAT WATCH 2020' collection project. When you see a bat, make an entry to the project. You don't even have to know what type of bat you're seeing. We're even interested if you saw a dead bat, just don't touch it. We need team members across NW Indiana to collect sighting data on bats this year. It will help us get grants and offer scientific information that has been missing in our region. Anyone can do Citizen Science!
welcome home bats
"ADOPT A BAT" MAKES A GREAT GIFT
turn off the lights
Bats are nocturnal creatures. That means that they will stay in during the day and go out when it is dark. Bats do not like light and they will avoid it as much as it is possible. Please only use outdoor lighting when it is essential. With yard lights OFF, you'll have more bats eating up insects for you as natural pest control. And, you'll be helping decrease light pollution too!
Reproductive cycle of the Indiana Bat
Indiana bats mate during fall before they enter caves to hibernate. Females store the sperm through winter and become pregnant in spring soon after they emerge from the caves.
After migrating to their summer areas, females roost under the peeling bark of dead and dying trees in groups of up to 100 or more. Such groups are called maternity colonies. Each female in the colony gives birth to only one pup per year. Young bats are nursed by the mother, who leaves the roost tree only to forage for food. The young stay with the maternity colony throughout their first summer.
world's Largest mammal colony! Bats at Bracken
bats in the attic?
Bats can squeeze through extremely small gaps - 3/8 of an inch. They usually like to fly into homes at small architectural gaps near the edge of the roofline. From there, they crawl to their roosting spots. It's often easy to spot where they are going in and out, because they leave brown staining from the grease and oil in their fur, at the entry point. Or, you an just watch the house at dusk and see where they are coming out. It might be several different areas of the home.
You may hear them rustling and fluttering above the ceiling or in the walls. The best chance of hearing them is at dusk, as they are lining up to fly out of the house. Although physical sightings of them entering and exiting the building are the best identifier, bats clearly make themselves known with the odor of their droppings, or guano. It can accumulate in huge amounts, contaminating an attic and potentially causing lung disease for the people in the house. If the attic is warm enough, bats may roost there all year round. Otherwise, they migrate and return each spring.
Timing is everything! You MUST NOT exclude bats when there are baby bats present, usually from mid-May until mid-August in North America. Excluding their mothers who give them milk will strand and kill all the young flightless bats. Many bat problems happen when the young start to crawl around and fly, and sometimes the inexperienced young crawl down into the house. This usually happens in the month of August, which is the high season for bat control work. There are laws protecting bat colonies, so they must not be killed, only excluded! You don't want to kill a beneficial, insect-gobbling bat anyway. The bats are usually excluded through one-way exclusion devices. They go out and can't get back in. Once they are all safely outside, sealing the building properly is critical to the process.
Experience is very important when it comes to bat removal. We recommend that you hire a professional with bat removal experience. Look at the list of organizations with permits from the Indiana DNR to find an experienced team in your area.
print and color your own bat book
Email pictures of your creative bat pieces or your bat stories to Annette Hansen at executivedirectoriwlapcc@gmail.com They may be featured soon in the Chiroptera Monthly.