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Birds/bats solutions
 Bats
If you look up in the sky in the early evening, you may see many birds. If you look closely at these birds you will notice that many are not birds at all. They are actually bats!
Did you know that there are 986 different species of bats in the world, all of which fly. Bats are mammals. They have elongated fingers that stretch skin into "wings". Bats feed on many different things. Some bats are carnivorous (meat-eating), piscivorous (fish-eating), saguivorous (blood-eating), fruigivorous (fruit-eating), nectarivourous (nectar or pollen eating), but most of them are insectivorous (insect-eating)
Bats are quite common in most places in the world and N.C. is no exception. Below are some of the interesting tidbits of information regarding North Carolina bats.
Much of this information has been gleaned from Defenders of Wildlife.
Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight. With extremely elongated fingers and a wing membrane stretched between, the bat’s wing anatomically resembles the human hand, Almost 1,000 bat species can be found worldwide. In fact, bats make up a quarter of all mammal species on earth!
Size
Bats are divided into two suborders: Megachiroptera, meaning large bat, and Microchiroptera, meaning small bat. The largest bats have a 6 foot wingspan. The bodies of the smallest bats are no more than an inch long.
Lifespan
Most bats live longer than most mammals of their size. The longest known lifespan of a bat in the wild is 30 years for a little brown bat.
Diet
70% of bats consume insects. There are also fruit-eating bats; nectar-eating bats; carnivorous bats that prey on small mammals, birds, lizards and frogs; fish-eating bats; and the blood-sucking vampire bats of South America.
Population
While some bat populations number in the millions, others are dangerously low or in decline.
Range
Bats can be found almost anywhere in the world except the polar regions and extreme deserts.
Behavior
Echolocation
Some bats have evolved a highly sophisticated sense of hearing. They emit sounds that bounce off of objects in their path, sending echoes back to the bats. From these echoes, the bats can determine the size of objects, how far away they are, how fast they are traveling and even their texture, all in a split second
Bats find shelter in caves, crevices, tree cavities and buildings. Some species are solitary while others form colonies of more than a million individuals.
Reproduction
Gestation 40 days - 6 months (bigger bats have longer gestation periods)
Litter Size Mostly one pup
For their size, bats are the slowest reproducing mammals on Earth. At birth, a pup weighs up to 25 percent of its mother’s body weight, which is like a human mother giving birth to a 31 pound baby! Offspring typically are cared for in maternity colonies, where females congregate to bear and raise the young. Male bats do not help to raise the pups.
Overwintering
To survive the winter some species of bat migrate, others hibernate, and yet others go into torpor (regulated hypothermia that can last from a few hours to a few months).
Threats
The greatest threat to bats is people. Habitat destruction and fear are a lethal combination for bats. In some areas, people have even been known to set fires in caves, killing thousands of roosting bats.
Control
Arrow is aware of the declining number of local bats. It is our desire to control bats from roosting in homes by the use of wire over vents or openings to force the bats to go to other locations. When we install hardware cloth (wire), we attach a funnel shape exit so that a bat can exit, but cannot return.
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