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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the June 21, 2009 Newsletter, issued from the Siskiyou Mountains west of Grants Pass, Oregon:
MOUSE-EARED BATS
This week when Anita shined a flashlight up into a crack between her house's gutter and eave facia I wasn't too surprised to see the fuzzy, reddish-brown, big-eared critters shown staring back down below.
There were nine of them and probably more live in the attic. My friends have erected a special roost just for bats, and a few were inside it, too, though more preferred the house. You can see the shelter, which is about 2½ feet high, hung beneath the workshop's eaves below:
You can see how simple it is, with thin dividers inside forming three narrow, vertical compartments. Bats are wonderful organisms and their populations are plummeting. Building such a shelter and offering it would make a wonderful summer project.
