Batboxes

[beenthere]

indiaxman1 prolly had that bat in the house all along. Finally woke up to it on his pillow.

;D

[indiaxman1]

I am laughing now....but my old blood pressure jumped for sure..guess I need to visit the attic spaces more often....critters come with territory...but don't have squatter's rights....and just glad those fruit/fox bats are south of the equator...glad to provide some new year smiles ;D

[northwoods1]

Last summer I got to witness one of the strangest and most fascinating spectacles of nature that I have ever seen in my entire life while I was staying at this hot springs in Colorado. Actually I got to witness a number of fascinating things there as it was a clothing optional hot springs , but that is a whole other story :D
What it was it this:
http://www.olt.org/programs/bats/bats.htm
From the springs you could hike up to those caves and wait for the bats to come out right about sunset. I thought I would hike up there just for the fun of it , but what I saw completely amazed me. The cave is at 8000' + altitude and it is quite a hike up there.  It was a very nice view from up there you could see clear across the valley to the mountains 10 miles or so away and no development anywhere. I waited and waited for the bats to come out and I began to doubt anything was going to happen , but finally just at twilight I began to hear a fluttering noise and a small stream of bats started coming out of the cave. Since the cave is a collapsed mine they had to come up out of a kind of a deep hole, and first they just came out in the hole and started flying in circles , more and more of them. Then it got amazing... more and more bats began coming out and spiraling around in a huge vortex down in the hole, it was like a whirlwind of bats. Then they lifted up and out over the edge of the deep cavern, and since it was 8,000' altitude they had to immediately begin dropping down into the valley, and there was literally a river of bats flowing down that mountainside. After 5 minutes of a steady stream of them coming out... then they really began coming out I sat and watched for 30 minutes as this stream of bats poured out , over 200,000 of them! It was absolutely one of the most amazing spectacles of nature I have ever seen. They say the bats eat over 1,000 pounds of insects in the valley every night. And it is only the male bats, no females of juveniles from what I understand they live somewhere else.
I know one thing for sure... I am going back to that place :D heck I might even hike back up there to see the bats again  

[SwampDonkey]

The would be something.

I seen caves in Va with bats hibernating in October. It was a tourist stop type of place with a guide giving a talk in the cave. The bats where really docile and clinging to the rock walls and hardly moved.