Having bats around can be something amazing to see, but like many other wild animals, sometimes they find themselves where they don’t need to be. Keeping them around is important, so knowing what time of year to remove bats in order to preserve their colonies is critical to their survival.
The bat is an animal that has captured the imagination of people for centuries. From Aztec gods to the Caped Crusader of Gotham City himself, bats have found a way into many aspects of our culture. Often maligned, the bat is an often misunderstood animal.
Bats are the only mammals capable of flight (without mechanical assistance). They are extremely social animals, living quiet lives in caves, forests, cliffs, and even the attics of homes, they raise their young and patrol the skies at night hunting insects.
What Time Of Year Do You Remove Bats?
Bats are complex creatures, and disrupting their habitat during some times of the year leaves them especially vulnerable. Studies in baby bats show that maternity season in North America is generally June and July. During the winter months, bats hibernate, migrate, or a combination of the two. Before they give birth, the colony of bats will find places to give birth and raise their young until they are able to fly and fend for themselves.
Baby bats are born flightless, and must be cared for throughout maternity season. Like other baby mammals, they are cared for by their colony, first through nursing on their mothers and then through larger food brought back to the colony. Moving bats during this time can lead to bat colonies being impacted, with the loss of many offspring.
Bat Proofing
During these summer months, it is beneficial to prevent bats from entering your home and other areas they are not wanted. Bat proofing attics and abandoned buildings might be necessary, especially with the amount of droppings, or guano, they leave behind. Installing one-way doors leading out of an area is a good way to discourage colonies that might be hibernating or haven’t quite left an area before maternity season. Sealing entry points discourages bats roosting.
Provide Other Options
Building a bat house away from the areas you don’t want populated by bats gives them other options that work for everyone. You still get to keep the benefits of having bats around, without the hazards that come with wild animal and human interactions; which usually never end well for the animals. Excluding bats from our ecosystem is not good for the environment and requires the use of more toxic pesticides in agriculture, which can affect other species such as bees which are important for pollination.
Moving bats out of your home or other areas they might come into contact with you ensures the safety of the bats and their continued benefit to the environment.
Myths about bats that need to be busted are that they drink blood, carry diseases, and transform into eastern European counts under the full moon.
Bats are extremely disease resistant and only three species of bats feed on the blood of other animals, and those bat species are not indigenous to the United States. Draculas are not bats, and so you might have to contact another kind of specialist to have those removed.
Bats Are Good Neighbors
Far from the gothic monsters of Victorian literature, bats are extremely helpful when it comes to controlling pests and an average big brown bat can eat hundreds of mosquitoes and moths every night. Like many animals, bats are only a problem when their world intersects with the world of humans. It is then that bat control becomes an issue and excluding bats from your environment becomes necessary.
Since we know that bats are our friends and aid in pest control as well as pollination, we want to help this protected species and do as little damage as possible when trying to get the bats to leave. Unfortunately, use of pesticides, lack of education about bats, and disruption of their natural habitats have led to a sharp decline in their numbers over the years. Without proper wildlife management practices, we could be looking at extinctions of some species of bats within our lifetimes.
What Does A Bat Removal Expert Do?
Getting bats to leave on their own may not be possible, so calling an expert might be what you need. A bat removal expert will humanely remove bats from your home and relocate them to other areas. Bat control is much like other types of wildlife control.
The bats from your home are contained and removed without harm if at all possible. It is important to remove bats during times when they are not raising baby bats in order to preserve the health of the colony.
Contact CP Bat Mitigation
Bats are important creatures to the environment and an animal with such diversity that they should be admired, rather than feared. With over 45 species of bats in North America alone, and nearly 1500 species worldwide, the bat has been here since the time of the dinosaurs.
We don’t fully know the impact they have on our environment, but it is safe to assume that handling them humanely and preserving their lives benefits us in many ways. If you have bats that need to be removed from your property, contact us. Bats are a protected species and help us in so many ways. Learning more about them can help people understand how they help people.