Animals

Beckoning the Bats: What They Do for Our Gardens and How to Attract Them There

In permaculture, we look for opportunities to expand on biodiversity, as well as take advantage of functions that can occur naturally or with minimal inputs from us. While often this takes the form of rotationally grazing domesticated animals, including them in waste cycles, and using them for pest control (a la not a slug problem but a duck shortage), we are also inclined to make the most of wild fauna as well.

Utilizing wildlife happens in many ways. We create good habitat for predatory insects with piles of logs and layers of mulch, for frogs with small ponds, for lizards and snakes with rockeries, and for birds with hedges. We attract bees and butterflies with particular flowers. We cultivate populations of earthworms and black soldier flies. In return, they control pest populations, add fertility, spread seeds, and create compost.

Why Bats Are So Useful

Bat in Flight (Courtesy of dingopup)

Bats, too, are wonderfully useful wildlife. In fact, their collective functional value is quite high when compared to other animals.

Like predatory insects, frogs, and lizards, some bats are skillful pest eliminators, and this is particularly useful in that they are doing it in the air (rather than relatively stationary) and at night, when other animals are often sleeping. They are also particularly linked to eating pests that are problematic for crop favorites, like corn, tomatoes, and beans, to name but a few.

Like birds, bats are founts (for want of a perfect word) of fertility, and some of them, also like birds, are great cultivators of seeds. Guano is used in many product fertilizers and is likely the most profitable of all animal excrement. Obviously, as is the case with birds, when bats eat fruit and dispose of the seeds, they do so in beautiful capsules of richness, helping new fruit plants get their start.

Like bees and butterflies, other bats are actually pollinators, known to consummate the love of over 700 plants, such as mangoes and avocadoes. These bats are nectar-eaters, and they dart around from flower to flower, spreading pollen as they feed, much the same way bees and butterflies do.

As is now apparent, bats bring a huge element of biodiversity to a farm as well. Not only are they a productive animal to the ecosystem, often filling nighttime niches that other animals won’t, but also they are the second largest (rodents are first) mammalian families, with over 1300 species. Different species of bats, too, are very different in their habits, as some hunt down insects, others—the biggest—eat fruit, and still others pollinate. Luckily for us, just about any permaculture site would likely provide for bats, and they undoubtedly would pay that favor back to the farm.

Where Bats Like to Be

Bats in a Mango Tree (Courtesy of Emma Gallagher)

When working in Panama, I was trimming some banana leaves down to allow some sunlight into an area, and as I passed through with my machete ablaze, I whacked the wrong leaf. Suddenly, in mid-morning, five or six bats were circling in the understory until finally settling back, again as a group, under a new leaf. From then on, I would see them daily, huddled on the underside of banana leaves. It’s the perfect bat home.

Funnily enough, at the same site, we later discovered a small group of bats that would spend their days on the underside of a mango tree, which again makes perfect sense for a bat hangout. In the evening, these bats would spread out over the two acres and beyond, but during the day, they would cuddle up and hang out high in the shade.

Prior to that, I’d known bats as somewhat problematic fruit eaters. I’d worked on a farm in Guatemala where they’d munch down on the occasional bunch of bananas growing, and more so, they’d leave little marks on the avocadoes. On that same farm, I watched the owner gleefully show off a pile of guano when he discovered some bats living under the siding, on the sun-facing side, near the top of his A-frame house. Again, it was the perfect bat home.

While we often think of caves, bats live in many places. We also find them under the eaves of our houses and in the crevices of buildings. They are particular, like most animals, to specific conditions. They like the darkness, and they like tight spaces, such as perched along the spine of huge banana leaf. They like to be high and safe from predators, such as on the underside of a huge mango tree with tufts of leaves obscuring them. They like to be warm, such as under the siding of a house being bathed in sunlight. These are natural conditions that might attract bats to your garden.

How Bat Houses Work

Bat House (Courtesy of bptakoma)

The other option, perhaps a tad more accommodating, would be making bat houses, and those can come with some extra perks, too.

Bat houses are simple to build. More or less, they are thin boxes, about 60 centimeters by 60 centimeters but only about two centimeters deep. They need a good roof, and the box itself should be sealed except for the bottom. The back panel of the box should be a little longer (reaching about 5-10 cm lower) than the front panel, giving bats a landing platform, and reaching a little higher than the front panel, giving the roof a pitch. The back panel should also have enough texture for bats to get traction for climbing in. Low on the front panel, especially in warmer climates, some ventilation is good, either about a one centimeter slit or a line of drilled holes about ten centimeters from the bottom.

Once the box is put together, it needs to mounted onto something that is high and steady, such as a tree, post, or wall. The recommended height for bat houses is about four to five meters high, in order to keep them safe from predators. Additionally, and somewhat surprisingly, the boxes should be placed in a sunny spot, not for the light but for the warmth. If there are plenty of posts or scrap boards around, those can be used to place bat houses exactly where you want them. Then, it’s a waiting game, but if bats are around (and they usually are), they will find the boxes. (Obviously, different species will have different preferences, so a little research may go a long way in attract the right bats.)

While there are many designs and considerations for bat houses, including large-scale domed roofs that could double as shelter for straw or something else that needs to be kept dry, the basic box described above can most likely be put together with scrap material or a repurposed pallet. Multiple boxes can also be mounted around the garden, and these can double as strategically placed nutrient deposits, knowing that guano will drop below the houses. The guano can either be caught in a well-placed container to be used where needed, or there can be garden beds or irrigation ponds catching it below, spreading the nutrient with no additional effort required.

Header: Bracken Cave Bats (Courtesy of Daniel Spiess)

Jonathon Engels

The financially unfortunate combination of travel enthusiast, freelance writer, and vegan gardener, Jonathon Engels whittled and whistled himself into a life that gives him cause to continually scribble about it. He has lived as an expat for over a decade, worked in nearly a dozen countries, and visited dozens of others in the meantime, subjecting the planet to a fiery mix of permaculture, music, and plant-based cooking. More of his work can be found at Jonathon Engels: A Life About.

5 Comments

  1. What a downright absurd article.
    Is the author aware that fruit bats in Australia are a scourge? Not only can they inflict substantial damage to commercial fruit crops, they carry the ABLV lyssavirus. This virus kills horses and humans.

  2. After seeking a solution to mosquitos around our property and reading several articles that debunked the effectiveness of lemon grass and other “citrus”-based approaches, we investigated the idea of building bat houses. The only article I found that took a scientific approach to whether or not bats would be an effective solution in our situation made an effective argument against it, and I have yet to find a convincing argument for it. This is not to say that bats don’t eat mosquitos, but as to whether or not they will reduce the mosquito population near a residence is another matter and remains a question to me. Is there any scientific study that proves they do, so that we’re not basing our conclusions on a truncated syllogism (i.e., bats eat mosquitos so they’ll eat all mine, which is not necessarily logical)? I love the little guys, and would like nothing better than to have a rational reason to welcome them onto our property.

  3. Hi Jim–
    I found nothing convincing, nor does the article claim anything, about bats eliminating mosquito populations. Rather, I mentioned that they feed on pests, naming particular crops that these pests bother. From what I can tell, mosquitoes aren’t a large part of the bat diet (too small), but they are a tiny part of it. Nevertheless, I feel certain that they will not eliminate mosquitoes from your property. From what I’ve found in research, certain birds–purple martins, swallows, and waterfowl–are more apt to eat them, and certain fish–Gambusia affinis, goldfish, guppies–will help by eating the larvae. However, I also wouldn’t count on any one of these, or even a combination, doing away with the problem in total. Best of luck.

  4. I’m not sure I’d want to encourage what we call Flying Foxes or Fruit Bats to my garden but I’m happy with the thought of them hanging out in the bush areas pollinating local species. I am however very keen to encourage the local microbat species. They are amazing insect eaters and I’m hoping they will check out some potential new accommodation under my verandah in the warmer months. Very keen for their presence and for the mouse pellet sized guano they like to excrete at the point of entering their roost.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Articles

Check Also
Close
Back to top button