16 Bat Houses And Bat Caves

Bat houses are like slimline bird houses on stilts. It seems that bats will slither into folder sized slots, and a phone box sized house will carry tens of thousands of bats. Something to think of, if you want to annoy your neighbors. Along with the houses are some artificial bat caves, built by bat men and bat women, such as the Dorset Bat Group.

Iraqi Bat House

In the evening at dusk, when the sun goes down hundreds of bats come out to feast

Bat House Project, Jorgen Tandberg and Yo Murata
Beautiful, poetic and unexpected, combining state-of-the-art technology with a rural and romantic aesthetic. 


 Modernist Bat House by Alex Metcalf


Henry Doorly Zoo artificial bat cave




 Bat House by Arup Associates


Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower, Florida
Built in 1929 by Richter Clyde Perky, a fish lodge owner, to control the mosquito problem in the Lower Keys. However, when the bats were put in, they supposedly flew away, never to return.


Seven Chamber Steel Bat House
Built from the ground up to never separate, never delaminate, and possibly never need to be re-coated, this bat house is ideal where regular maintenance may be infrequent, inconvenient, or dangerous. The super-duty exterior houses a rectangular baffle cluster with seven chambers. Over 100" of linear crevices provides roost space for 210 Myotis-sized bats.

The shell is composed of a combination of steel and exterior plywood, then end-user painted with either rust-resistant paint or readily available spray-on, truck-bed liner. This bat house should remain airtight and serviceable many times longer than even the best protected wooden bat house. The interior baffles are still traditional yellow pine plywood to add mass and thereby retain heat. Our bat houses never need cleaning as the droppings simply fall to the ground.

Each baffle is individually hand scratched and features a pass-thru at the top allowing bats to easily change crevices. This special ÒatticÓ area allows bats to roost against the top of the roof. Baffles form standard 3/4" crevices, suitable for little brown, Indiana, big brown, and many other bat species across North America. Baffles are predicted to last over 20 years.These baffles are permenantly hand scratched for bats to "get a grip".







Municipal bat-roost in San Antonio

1914. Dr. Charles Campbell and a “municipal bat-roost” in San Antonio, Texas (”for one of man’s best friends“), his idea for mosquito control at a time when malaria was a major public health problem. Disguised as a favorite bat habitat, a church steeple (complete with cross), the roost was fitted with a trapdoor and stilts to facilitate the harvesting of guano by the wagonload for use as fertilizer.


 Japanese Highland Bat House
 Fort McCoy Bat House
A group of interested people observes the bat house site near the Sparta-Fort McCoy Airport on South Post


Richard West, a bat researcher, checks a bat house site at Fort McCoy to see if it's inhabited.

  Richard West, a bat researcher, helped construct three artificial bat house sites at Fort McCoy under the guidance of Mike Bakke, better known as the Wisconsin bat specialist. The housing sites are approximately 15 feet off the ground and have more than 10 structures each to house bats.
  Eventually, each of the three sites could house as many as 10,000 bats, he said. The bat houses have differing habitat arrangements where the nocturnal bats can spend the daylight hours in hiding before beginning their search for food during the nighttime hours.


Dorset Bat Group, purpose built bat cave
The Dorset Bat Group consists of a number of people from all walks of life who help the conservation of bats in Dorset in many ways
The group has an active volunteer section that carries out much of the practical work involved in monitoring bats and their habitats throughout Dorset. Much of this work involves roost visits on behalf of Natural England, although They also carry out rescues of injured and downed bats, as well as running a number of Bat Box schemes.They also carry out project work and participate in the National Bat Monitoring Programme


Used Tire Bat Cave

Constructed with used tires from SWEPCO’s huge earthmoving equipment, the bat cave is only the second of its kind built in the United States.
The cave contains a plethora of “bat condos” formed by wire mesh hung on the inside of each tire.
 Gary Hanson (left) checks the positioning at the heart of the cave of “Big Bertha,” the largest of the tires with a 42-inch “footprint” (tread width), 100 inches in overall diameter and 45 inches in its interior opening, as Amanda Crnkovic, an instructor of biology, goes for a shovelful of dirt to toss under the tire for stability. At the controls of the excavator is SWEPCO equipment operator William Huggens, while Jack Walker checks alignment from atop the huge tires and Mac Soules works with a shovel from below to stabilize the tires. All three men are employees at SWEPCO’s Pirkey generating plant. Hanson is an assistant professor of environmental science, director of the LSUS Red River Watershed Management Institute and professor designate of the Don & Earlene Coleman Red River Watershed Management Professorship.


Maberry Centre Pole Bat House

This unusual design for a bathouse was developed by Maberry Centre, a leading innovator in bat house design and manufacture. The design has been used successfully in a number of places, and is certified by Bat Conservation International.


Bat House Project Andrew Brown, Gareth Jones & James Falconer

A strong abstract design with varied potential for use. Good division between cold and warm areas. Modules of different conditions could be used for experimentation.