The Bat House Project

Sixteen bat houses of three different designs were built by Al Tozier in 2003 and have been installed in Madera Canyon, the Continental School, and on the La Posada Campus along the Santa Cruz River. The designs are: Rocket Box that has two chambers, Nursery Box that has four chambers, and Wedge, that has only one chamber. The original plan was to install four boxes at four locations at different elevations in the canyon. However, others have taken an interest in the program and the Board has decided to place two boxes out of the canyon at lower elevations. In 2005, all the houses were repainted a neutral sandy-gray color to make them less conspicuous.

Following is a chart of the placement of the boxes:

 

Location	Elevation (feet)	Box Type(s)
La Posada	2,839	Nursery
Continental School	3,025	Wedge
Visitor Information Station	4,428	Rocket
Proctor Trail	4,501	Nursery, Rocket, 2 Wedges
White House Trail	4,627	Nursery, Rocket, 2 Wedges
Kent Springs Center	5,375	2 Wedges
Chuparosa Inn	5,265	Rocket, Wedge, Nursery

If you walk the Proctor and White House Trails, you will see the boxes and new interpretive signs that tell about the 15 species of bats that inhabit the canyon and something about their natural history.

 

Each bat house has a small computer installed that records the temperature in the box four times each day. There is also a computer at each location that measures the outside temperature for comparison. The batteries of both computers last for about one year. The houses are lowered one at a time to change the batteries and download the temperature data to a laptop computer. The general plan for the houses and the data to be collected was suggested by the North American Bat House Research Project. Bat Conservation International (BCI) collects the data from over 6,000 volunteer research associates such as those in Madera Canyon. For more information on bats, go to the BCI web site at: www.batcon.org

 

There have been bats in several of the houses and we hope that more will show up each year. Please do not disturb the bat houses but look from a distance. Once colonies of nesting or roosting bats have been well established, we might be able to watch the bats leave the boxes to hunt in the evening and bring food back to their young. If we are lucky enough to get to this stage, we will provide more information here so you can watch this event in the canyon. The bat house on the La Posada campus had a colony of over 400 Mexican Free-tailed Bats in spring 2006 and a smaller number in the fall. These bats are migrants and do not stay in the houses in summer or winter. They are significant predators of mosquitos and other flying insects along the Santa Cruz River Valley where La Posada is located.

 

For more information you may mail Luis Calvo by contacting him at our email address: info@friendsofmaderacanyon.org.

 

Bat houses on the Proctor to White House Trail. The poles bent by December's wind storm in 2005 have been replaced and the houses have been repainted. Photo by Al Tozier. 

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