The Benefits of Bats and How to Attract Them to Your Yard
My kid’s stuffed bat, Mister Batty Bat, flying out of the magnolia tree. In real life, bats don’t come around during the day.
Updated March 2, 2024
Kids love bats, because bats are cool and weird. But it’s no wonder that myth and superstition surround these wee creatures, given that bats:
Only come out at night.
Are the only mammals that can fly.
Congregate in large numbers in deep, dark caves and creepy abandoned places.
Can navigate the world in total darkness.
Hang upside down while they sleep.
Make strange, otherworldly clicking and chirping sounds.
Granted, some people find them super creepy, but bats are amazing little critters that can do your back yard a world of good. Here’s what makes bats a welcome neighbor in many an urban back yard — and how you can get them to move into yours, too.
The Benefits of Bats in the Back Yard
Besides just being generally cool, bats offer three major benefits for your back yard.
Bats are pollinators.
Bats, like bees, are attracted to the nectar of plants. When the bees head back to their hives for the night, the bats emerge to take over pollinating duties. Bats in the back yard can lead to fuller, healthier flower beds and ornamentals.
Bats eat tons of mosquitos and other pests.
Bats are the primary predators for night-flying insects like mosquitos, moths, gnats, and flying beetles. They eat the same bugs that plague your garden, so a population of bats in the yard can go a long way toward reducing pests without the need for chemicals that can affect local wildlife and pets. Every hour, a single bat can eat up to 600 mosquito-sized insects, which adds up to half its body weight in bugs each night. In fact, because of their voracious appetite for insect pests, bats are worth more than $3.7 billion a year to the economy in reduced pesticide use and crop damage, according to Bat Conservation International.
Bats excrete prized fertilizer.
Bat poop, called guano, is an excellent fertilizer, one of the best you can get your hands on. It typically contains 10 percent nitrogen, 3 percent phosphorous, and one percent potassium. It lasts a long time in the soil, and it’s particularly beneficial to your flowers, ornamentals, herbs, and veggies. If you’re a gardener, you can’t buy better fertilizer than what bats produce for free.
6 Ways to Attract Bats to Your Yard
1. Plant native species
Plants that are native to your region have evolved to attract insects that provide bats with a smorgasbord of food options. Grow a native wildflower garden with a variety of flowers, including very fragrant species like honeysuckle and those with light-colored flowers or flowers that stay open at night.
2. Keep the cats inside
Outdoor cats are a major predator of bats (and birds.) If you have outdoor cats, but also want to attract bats to your yard, try to keep the kitties inside at night — bring them in at least 30 minutes before sunset, and keep them in for at least an hour after the sun sets. This is especially important when bats are taking care of their babies from mid-June through August.
3. Create water features in your yard
Bats are thirsty little critters. They can lose half their body weight in water each day, and a water source like a pond, bird bath, or fountain is sure to attract the local bats to your yard.
4. Keep it on the dark side
Too much bright lighting can keep bats away. Keep the outdoor lights off whenever possible during bats’ most active time, from around a half hour before to around an hour after sunset. To reduce outdoor light, install motion sensor lights or use soft yellow or red light bulbs, which are less likely to disturb wildlife.
5. Don’t use pesticides
Pesticides in the yard reduce insect populations, including beneficial bugs. They can also poison bats and other wildlife, up and down the food chain. When you need to deter pests, choose the least-toxic solutions. Check with your local or state university extension for information on the safest (for wildlife) methods for controlling a variety of unwanted garden critters.
6. Install a backyard bat house
Because of habitat losses, bats are finding it harder and harder to find adequate daytime roosting places. A bat house can attract bats to your yard and help a bat colony thrive. Bat houses are designed with bats' needs and natural habitats in mind. Once you install a bat house, keep your yard bat-friendly, and be patient — bats have a slow reproductive cycle, and it can take one to three seasons before your bat house is occupied to capacity. You’ll have a better chance of bats moving in during the first season if you install the bat house in the early spring.
How to Choose the Right Bat House for the Back Yard
Not all bat houses are created equal. Here’s what to consider when shopping around for bat houses or bat house plans.
Size and capacity
Bat houses come in various sizes — larger houses tend to attract more bats. Some bat houses have a single chamber, while others have two or more. Single-chamber bat houses attract fewer bats than multi-chamber houses, which provide the bats with lots of options for staying warm or cool in all seasons. In general, depending on size, number of chambers, and other factors, a backyard bat box can house anywhere from 75 to 300 or more bats.
Material
Look for bat houses made of durable, weather-resistant materials like cedar or (untreated) exterior-grade plywood. These materials provide insulation and can withstand the elements. The interior surfaces and landing platforms should be rough or grooved to allow bats to grip and climb easily.
Your climate
The ideal color of your bat house is based on your local climate. In cooler regions, choose a dark-colored house, which will absorb heat to keep the colony toasty. In warmer areas, choose a lighter-colored house to help prevent overheating. The ideal internal temperature of a bat house is between 85°F and 100°F, which helps bat pups stay warm and grow strong and healthy.
Here’s a general rule of thumb for choosing the right color based on your region’s high temperatures in July:
95 to 100 degrees: choose a lighter-colored box (usually “natural”).
85 to 95 degrees: choose a medium-colored box (usually medium brown).
85 degrees and below: choose a black box.
Design and ventilation
Proper ventilation is important for preventing the bat house from becoming too hot. Look for bat houses with ventilation slots at the bottom or sides. Choose a design that includes a landing area or platform at the bottom, which helps bats safely and easily enter and exit the house.
Mounting location
Before you choose a bat house, decide where you will mount it. The ideal location for a bat house is one that gets 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight daily, ideally facing south or southeast. The house should be mounted at least 12 to 20 feet above the ground, and 10 to 15 feet away from trees to keep predators to a minimum and allow the bats plenty of room to come and go with ease.
The best place to hang a bat house is on the side of a non-metal building or atop a metal pole that predatory critters can’t easily climb up — but it should be as sheltered from the wind as possible. Trees aren’t the best place to hang a bat house, because predators like cats and snakes can reach it without effort. And for some reason, bats don’t like to occupy houses installed on metal-sided buildings.
A bat house placed near a water source, such as a pond or birdbath, may do better than one placed far from a water source. If there’s a pond, creek, river, lake, or other big water source within a quarter of a mile, you probably don’t need to provide your own, although having one may help attract bats to your yard faster.
Approved designs
Bat houses that meet the guidelines of bat conservation organizations like Bat Conservation International, Bat Conservation & Management, and Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation (MTBC) are most likely to attract bats. Cool fact: Merlin Tuttle, one of the world’s foremost bat experts and founder of Bat Conservation International, is credited with protecting Austin’s famous bridge-dwelling bat colony — and he’s the grandaddy of the whole bat house in the back yard thing.
How to Maintain a Bat House
Give your bat house a once-over each year while it’s unoccupied — sometime between November and early March. Look inside with a flashlight to make sure there are no unwanted guests squatting in the house, such as wasps or mud daubers. Scrape out any nests or guano buildup with a stick. Here’s a video from the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department describing and demonstrating how to maintain your bat houses each year.
DIY Bat House Plans
Building your own bat house can be a fun family project, but fair warning: these seemingly simple houses are fairly complex structures. If you’re an experienced woodworker or a fancy-pants DIYer up for the task, Bat Conservation and Management offers a $5.99 downloadable bat house plan that includes complete instructions for building, assembling, installing, and maintaining a bat house. They also offer this free bat house plan for a four-chamber nursery bat house.
If you want more DIY options, the BFF of bats, our very own Merlin Tuttle, recently published The Bat House Guide, which offers up in glorious detail the favorite bat house designs of the world’s leading bat researchers. It includes step-by-step instructions and diagrams as well as lots of Tuttle’s incredible bat photographs.
Pre-Assembled Bat Houses
You can find ready-to-hang bat houses all over the place, but it’s really important to choose one that’s designed in accordance with conservation best practices. I scoured Amazon’s large selection and chose my top picks for single-, double-, triple-, and four-chamber bat houses:
