Bats in the Belfry is a good thing
By Sharon Frickey –
(Revised 10/19/2022) Bats, those silent, ghostly creatures that fly out of the night and scare us in creepy, dark Halloween movies, are not the real thing. Real bats, including the 18 species that live in Colorado, are not scary or bloodthirsty vampires that suck on human blood. Instead of being squeamish or frightened, folks should know the many reasons why bats are important and need our support.
Those bats come from myths that go back centuries and often proliferate this time of year. But those stories that scare and misdirect our attention don’t help bats, and bats need help today. They are in trouble.
Despite comprising almost 23% of all known species of mammals and existing in many diverse forms worldwide, these night-flying mammals are declining in numbers. People fear them due to unfounded beliefs and kill them without realizing how the loss of these bats is hurting the surrounding ecosystem.
One Bat Man to the Rescue
One Colorado man who has come to understand the importance of bats is Dave Betts. He is committed to helping bats survive in the Centennial State.
Dave Betts designs and builds bat houses for his company NUWTIQUES.
He knows that the state’s fluctuating fall temperatures and early snows are hard on bats and send most of the winged bug-eaters looking for shelter. They either migrate to warmer climates or find a place to hibernate before early frosts or a hard freeze ends their food supply.
Hibernating can be a risk for Colorado bats as they try to survive in our four-season state. Just finding a place to roost during the summer can also be a challenge.
That’s where Betts comes in. It is the mission of this Front Range-based bat man to help bats find a place to call home. He designs and builds top-of-the-line handcrafted houses for bats. No stranger to the trade, Betts was once a house builder (for humans). Now these incredible winged, insect-eating creatures we call bats benefit from his craftsmanship.
Building Bat Houses
A pallid bat perches on a rock.
So how did this Colorado bat man become so interested in these flying mammals? “I was soaking in the spa tub,” Betts recalls. “My wife opened the outside door in our bedroom and in flew a bat. We had no idea what to do. We watched it fly around while I got dressed and for 45 minutes we tried to shoo it out the door by waving towels. We finally grabbed a couple of fishing nets, scooped it up and released it outside. We realized we didn’t know anything about bats.”
Betts did what millions of us do to get information; he Googled it. A hit for Bat Conservation International, a nonprofit organization, piqued his curiosity about bats’ role as good neighbors. On the BCI website, he learned a variety of interesting facts about bats.
Why Bats are Important for the Environment
Betts’ research uncovered information that shows that big brown bats, year-round residents of Colorado, prefer roosts in towns, cities and buildings.
He found that nectar-feeding bats are critical pollinators for a wide variety of plants in a variety of ecosystems, from deserts to rainforests. Peaches and agave cacti are just two plants dependent on bats for pollination.
He also learned that a small colony of as few as 150 big brown bats can eat 1.3 million pests each year. One little brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes an hour. Insectivorous bats are the primary predators of night-flying insects, and many damaging pests (like the corn worm) are on their menu.
A biologist examines the spread of wings of the Yuma myotis.
Could these insect eaters help stem the over-whelming use of pesticides? Betts wondered. He thought about how his daughter’s horses were susceptible to the mosquito-transmitted West Nile virus and how his neighbors fought seasonal hoards of miller moths and mosquitoes. Could bats be part of the solution to some of these issues?
How Housing Helps Bats
Betts joined BCI and learned more about bats, including how installing bat houses could help the local bat population. A craftsman and cabinetmaker who worked with wood, Betts thought, “I can do that.”
He did more than build one house; he became the only Bat Conservation International certified bat-house builder in Colorado. And he built these “luxurious handcrafted bat houses” from reclaimed and refurbished woods: cedar and redwood.
Yuma myotis roost under a wooden bridge.
His Black Forest company fills orders for single-chamber bat houses to serve 25 bats; a two-chamber house to serve 75 bats; and a four-chamber or “quadbox” that holds 150 bats. Bat houses can be mounted on existing structures or on poles in a location away from trees and bright lights.
Betts consults with clients about the size and location for the bat house. Early spring when the bats’ food source emerges is the best time to install a bat house.
Bats losing previous summer roosts are at their greatest need for new roosts as new offspring are born. Safe and well-located bat houses can help. Ordering before the May-June rush puts a bat house in place to be enjoyed for the full summer season.
Colorado Bat Stats
Types of Bats
A fringed myotis roosts on a cave wall in Antiojo Cave in Mexico.
By October, some of Colorado’s 18 species of bats have already migrated south, having left when the temperature started to drop below 42 degrees.
As warm-blooded mammals, bats are sensitive to temperature, which determines the exact time they migrate or hibernate. This year there were 40-degree nights in some higher elevations in early August.
One of the dozen or so species that live year-round in Colorado is the canyon bat, formerly the western pipistrelle. It is Colorado’s smallest bat, weighing a little more than what a penny weighs. Its slow, erratic, butterfly-like flight is distinctive.
A desert bat’s short black ears, grayish brown coat and black mask is attractive. Roosting in dense brush and beneath rock slabs, it chooses a different roost for night and day. Nonmigratory and sedentary, its only known hibernation roost, was sighted in a gold mine in the La Plata Mountains 9,500 feet above Mancos. One or two young are born and live in nursery colonies of 20 to 50 females.
Active throughout the year, canyon bats emerge, sometimes before sundown, to feed on small moths, beetles, mosquitoes and flies. Winds above 10 miles per hour halt foraging; the slightest breeze blows this bat off course or causes it to stall.
Two spotted bats take flight.
Another Colorado bat is the thumb-sized western small-footed myotis, measuring a total length of 80 millimeters. It wings through the Western Slope’s canyon country and rocky areas of northeastern and southeastern Colorado. In summer it roosts in buildings and mines, on the underside of bark on trees and beneath stones. In winter it stays to hibernate alone or in small groups in caves and mines.
Even though it is small, it may winter in open tunnels at low temperatures and low humidity at elevations up to 9,500 feet, sometimes hibernating near other bats, including the Townsend’s big-eared bat.
Townsend’s big-eared bats sport remarkable ears reaching a length of 1 1/2 inches, with a body size between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 inches.
The availability of roosts seems to determine where they summer. They do not make major migrations and hibernate from late October through April in hibernacula — locations chosen by bats for hibernation — with low and stable temperatures. During hibernation they roost in the open, sheltered with their ears coiled back like a ram’s horns, probably to conserve body heat.
Silver-haired bats, one of the few species that produce two young per year, are attractive with black hair tipped in silver or yellow. A medium-sized bat (a little over 4 inches) often sighted in late spring and early fall, it roosts in tree hollows, behind loose bark on dead trees, under rocks or in open sheds or garages.
A gray myotis captures a mayfly for dinner.
It feeds on moths, flies, beetles and wasps, foraging near the ground around ponds and woodland streams. An unusually slow flyer, these bats are hooked occasionally by anglers fly-fishing. On occasion, silver-haired bats have been sighted hibernating in mines.
Protecting Colorado’s Bat Population
In hibernation, a bat’s heart beats 17-20 times a minute; when aroused it beats 300 to 400 times per minute. When it takes flight its heartbeat rate per minute can reach more than 1,000 beats. When aroused during hibernation, a bat burns stored fat, facing starvation before spring.
A safe place to hibernate is critical for the survival of these ecosystem friendly mammals.
But there is tough news for our bat populations: white-nose syndrome. Recently discovered in Colorado, this fungus keeps moving. Colorado Parks and Wildlife received a $41,500 grant to help combat newly discovered fungus.
A female hoary bat in flight.
The fungus, named after a white, frosty-looking dust on the nose, ears and wings of infected bats, appears during hibernation. Over a dozen of Colorado’s bats hibernate in state, mostly in mountain or canyon areas in small groups in small spaces — even in cracks and crevices..
Today, about 109 bat species are considered vulnerable and 83 species are endangered. The good news is that people are recognizing that bats are a fascinating and critical part of our ecosystem.
People, such as bat-house builder Betts, are stepping forward to help bats. Others are ordering houses and finding ways to help bats flourish in Colorado.
People are realizing that while strings of bat lights hanging from front porches on Halloween are festive, they are only decorations. Real bats swooping through the back yard or over the fields, eating thousands of insects each night and keeping Colorado’s ecosystem healthy, are more important.
Having bats in the belfry (or nearby bat house) is a good thing.
Sharon Frickey, a retired teacher, lives in Arvada. She loves to spend time with her grandchildren and now, with her research on bat, will be able to teach them all about flying mammals.
You can reach Dave Betts at betts_construction@yahoo.com.