I'm thinking of getting of of those bat house to help alleviate the mosquito problem?

Question

Out of curiosity how do bats pick a place to stay, do they always use a bat house if one puts it up?

Answer 1

Hello,,Martins are just as good,,get a Martin bird house,,if you live in the country it's better.

you might have to shoot some other birds to keep the Martins around. But they eat thousands of mosquitoes every day.

Answer 2

Bat houses are not always occupied right away..it can take up to a year for bats to take up residence.  (although some people claim to have bats take up residence in just a couple hours).  A lot can depend on when and if bats will occupy your bat house.  Look here for useful tips on how to attract bats and how and where to put a bat house up:

http://www.batcon.org/home/index.asp?idP...

Answer 3

Depends on where you live and how well they like the house. After reading a good book on bat houses i realized how difficult it is to get the right house in the right location to keep bats. And in colder climates, they are seasonal visitors.

Issues that are important are the size of the box, directional facing of the box, color and age of the materials and these all impact the likelihood of the house being inhabited. All the variables change depending on your location, daytime/nighttime temps, etc so getting  a house correct to entice bats is really tough. Some features that make it most likely to be successful is to have a location that is within 1 mile of a water source such as a river or lake and put the box up where it is not within 15 feet of another structure (building, tree, etc).  Despite having bats on our property, being within 1 mile of water, we have yet to have our box inhabited. :(  As a side note, another big consumer of mosquitos are dragonflies.  Dragonflies are voratious consumers who can really help with mosquito populations. Unfortunately, Martins love to eat Dragonflies and eat many more of them than they do of the mosquitos so providing martin houses is really a detriment to the issue of getting rid of mosquitos.