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climbing up... |
... somebody home ? |
Gunter Hartz and Ulrich Marckmann, former members of the local group of the NGO
Nabu received 200 bat boxes from the city of Kiel in 1995 which they then distributed around likely
bat habitats. Every fall since then these boxes have been checked and cleaned and all data supplied to the administration agency for the environment where all such data is collected centrally.
An overview of the first five years shows that bat boxes may already be used after a very short time. They are also popular with birds, who seem to also suffer from housing problems, and hornets, who may even colonise a number of boxes hanging close to one another. Also wasps may start a colony, but will often find that bat boxes are too small for them after a while.
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climbing up... |
... somebody home ? |
In our experience checking all 200 boxes requires about four weekends and a number of helpers as 200 trees have to be climbed, boxes opened carefully first checking for hornets or - worse - wasps. The boxes need to be cleaned and any bats encountered need to be checked for species and markings.
At a first view this box looks empty...
... but up to 14 Nyctalus noctula can be found sleeping inside such a box. After counting them the lid is replaced immediately to cause as little disturbance as possible.
Other species are usually found in smaller groups and some of them "play dead" when taken out of the box. Of course this makes handling them much easier.
Species include (at the time of the cleaning) Nyctalus noctula, Pipistrellus nathusii, Pipistrellus pipistrellus and Pipistrellus pygmaeus. As one (and only one) Myotis natteri has been found regularly during the past years in boxes close to one another this may be the same animal every year.