Bats eat 600 to 1000 insects per hour, helping rid your landscape of insect pests like moths and mosquitoes. While they do not harm people and contribute to local ecology, you probably don't want bats living right outside your house. If bats congregate outside your home, you're either providing them with an attractive dinner buffet or they roost nearby. Eliminating the food and shelter naturally causes bats to look elsewhere, leaving your immediate yard.
Instructions
1. Cut down dead trees on your property that may be providing homes for bats. Move piles of wood to a woodshed or garage. Bats may roost in piles of wood or holes in trees. Eliminating potential roosting sites encourages bats to go elsewhere.
2. Remove standing water in your yard, whether it's a birdbath or small pond. Empty containers that hold water. If you want to see the water but don't want bats, place netting over the water so creatures cannot access it. This also makes your home inhospitable to bats.
3. Control insects around your yard with moth lights, fly strips, citronella candles or other methods. If your yard has fewer insects, local bats have less reason to hang around waiting for dinner.
4. Look around your home and yard for evidence that bats are roosting in your garage, barn or elsewhere. Bat droppings are a major sign, as are bat noises and oily, furry patches near their entrances, called rubmarks. If you find bats roosting near your home, you'll need to remove them to decrease your bat problem. To do so, cover entrances and exists with mesh screen. Nail or staple the screen to the top of the opening but leave the bottom loose; this creates a one-way door so the bat can leave your building and cannot get back in.
5. Caulk all holes with caulk after one week. This gives the bats enough time to leave safely. Cover up holes in windows or doors with mesh screen, glass or boards.
Tips Warnings
Do not try to remove bats from dwellings from June to August. In these months, they care for baby bats, which are flightless. Excluding adult bats from a dwelling during these months leaves the baby bats to starve.
Tags: bats, outside, your, house, your home, your yard, around your, baby bats, bats from, bats roosting, mesh screen, outside your
