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OK next house related question, anybody know anything about bats ? I will give the Bat helpline a ring tomorrow, when they open,  but in the mean time house survey has just come back and there are bat boxes in the 'roof' now I know bats are a protected species and you can't disturb them, the challenge i have is that the 'roof' in question is actually the top of a Hop Kiln, and on the top of a hop kiln is a cowl which turns in the wind and apparently you need to go up into the cowl and 'grease the pole' periodically, anybody know what the situation is regarding having to carryout maintenance in a bat inhabited space.

 

 

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I'm sure you will be fine doing maintenance nearby. Goodwood have bat boxes in the pedestrian tunnel between the infield and outfield areas on the Lavant Straight and they haven't been stopped having thousands of people pass through at the Members and Revival meetings

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Nice creatures, they were in our house roof when we moved in and baby bats often got too cold to get back to the roost and my wife would put them in a plastic bowl in a warm bain-marie until they warmed up and could scale the walls back to mum. If you have not experienced them they are delightful creatures and do no harm, definitely not a pest they just have had a bad press in the horror movies.

Ours moved out in the spring returning late autumn so maintenance tasks were easy. Unless you had plans to rebuild they are nice to have about, But as per Roger they have rights.

Its just life in the country, not the sterile cities and doing you bit to protect the wildlife.

Alan

 

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We didn't have bats in our house and Holly tree when we moved in in 1976.

Although we didnt have them they moved away for about 10 years and then didn;t come back 10 years or so later.

And then the bats we didn't have were gone.

Very fickle things - even the ones you don;t have

I like them but sadly too many nerds with too many demands make it tiresome.

Roger

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We didn’t have them in the holly tree, the roof( they didn’t add to the coal pile in the model railway) and we didn’t have them in our burglar alarm box on the front of the house. They were just like Fairies or butterflies at dusk, absolutely beautiful to watch. Don’t you believe that you don’t get them in London, you do.....!

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They lived in the roof of our previous house near Tring.  They lodged between the tiles and the felt, but as the overlaps in the felting were not tight in places, they could fly about in the loft.

Apart from their droppings, which were small and dry, they caused me no bother.

I kept covers over any items where I didn't want droppings, and would use the hoover occasionally to remove the droppings.

Lovely to watch them at dusk as they swooped around the garden collecting insects.

The inhabitants which I didn't want in the loft were wasps, mice and squirrels - very difficult to keep them out!  One small squirrel managed to squeeze under the cover of the central heating header tank, couldn't escape and drowned.  The corpse had largely disintegrated by the time I discovered it and removal was a messy business!  Mouse traps caught the mice - I used to set 4 traps and had as many as 4 corpses one morning.  As they are larger, I had to use a rat trap for squirrels - because this was "humane", I had to use air gun for disposal. 

With wasps, I would place the hoover with its nozzle about 6 feet from the nest and attached to a rafter, with a light bulb immediately beside the nozzle  With the light bulb and hoover ON, I would break into the nest (which could be over a foot in diameter) with a long pole and then leave everything for a couple of hours.  I would return periodically to issue another prod to the nest.  When the nest was substantially destroyed, I would use the squirt foam killer to finish things off.  In 28 years, I was stung only once.

Ian Cornish

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We have bats , in the barns, fine until they pee and poo. Pee looks like small drops of honey all over the work bench, tools , car etc. Poo look like large mouse droppings all over...... you get the drift! Lovely creatures just wish they would pee and poo in Flight not when sleeping in the barn :-)

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3 hours ago, iain said:

We have bats , in the barns, fine until they pee and poo. Pee looks like small drops of honey all over the work bench, tools , car etc. Poo look like large mouse droppings all over...... you get the drift! Lovely creatures just wish they would pee and poo in Flight not when sleeping in the barn :-)

I'm sure there are plenty here who wished they didn't pee and poo while sleeping...:ph34r:

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We had bats in the attic a few years ago. We started seeing them flying around inside the house eventually as they worked their way through the various cavities in the structure. They made a mess and our attic insulation was blown paper. Our biggest concern was a rabid bat biting us our one of the cats so we had a specialist deal with them humanely. He went all around the roof closing off any potential entrance/exit except one. For that remaining opening he fabricated a tube out of the wire mesh he was using to close off the gaps and installed the tube (tunnel) perpendicular to the house. That evening at dusk we sat in my truck in the driveway and watched all the bats exit. They could not get back into the tube because there was no place to land. They were not happy. A few days later the guy came back and replaced the tube with some mesh to block off that opening.

We have not had any issues with bats since.

We had the blown paper insulation pumped out and new insulation installed to get rid of all the bat ****.

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It is an offence to destroy or damage Bats in any way. As I said above some maintenance whilst taking all care and precautions I'm sure would be fine, but Graham has already sad in his OP that he will check with the Bat Conservation Trust people which has to be the correct action. https://www.bats.org.uk/

I'm no expert but I know that Bats have two locations through the year - one for the Maternity phase of the year, and one for hibernation. I would have thought that if they are seen flying in the Summer near where Graham wants to work, then that is a safe location now whilst they hibernate elsewhere, but it is vital to get expert advice.

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Perhaps because I had fully boarded the floor of the loft of our old place near Tring, and warmth rises through a house, I never noticed the pee from the bats, just the small pieces of **** (somewhat larger than mouse ****) which dried quickly and were easily collected with the hoover. 

Or, our particular bats had been house-trained!

Iain is correct - severe penalties in the UK if one interferes with a bat.

Ian Cornish

I did not type ****, that was my 4-letter good old English word modified by the Forum's expurgator!

Edited by ianc
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Here is a little known fact.
I say that it is “Little known” because when ever I’ve told it to people over the last 40 years NO ONE has ever believed me and they think that I’ve made it up.

ALL Anglo Saxon four letter words relate to the sound that is made when that particular action takes place.

I don’t know where or when I was told it
But I think it is true.

In which case, all you are doing when you use an Anglo Saxon four letter word is talking about a sound.

You don’t believe me, do you…

Charlie.

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ache acre afar back ball barn bath bear bird bore bull busy chat chew clip clod cool coot core dent door duck dumb.........etc etc 

All anglo-saxon in origin and few of them can ever be onomatopoeic as they are nouns rather than verbs.

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Rob,

You are being far too technical.

I didn’t mean ALL four letter words, I meant all “Rude” four letter words.

If you take one of your words like “Dent” as an example, and you add “Ing” to the end of it you get “Denting”

The same as “****”. If you add “Ing” to the end, you get “****ing”.
Do you see what I mean?

So if “****”  is a sound, then “****ing” is the action.

 

Plus…
“Dent” is a noun AND a verb.

I dent.
You dent.
He, she, or it dents

(“I dent my candle at both ends, it gives a lovely light,
But oh my foes, oh my friends, it will not last the night.”)

I think you will find I’m right about this matter. (Even though Pete thinks not.)


Charlie.

.

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2 hours ago, Lebro said:

:D 

Yer see the trouble with “ my little pony” censorship suites is they are a load of b o l l o c k s  when they are faced with double space spelling...not a lot of people know that.

Mick Richards 

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If it wasnt clear, no bats were harmed during their eviction and the bats most likely just went into our next door neighbors attic.  Love the My Little Pony reference. I keep forgetting to adjust the usual four letter words so they dont get asterisked out.

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Is it not a case that it’s an offence to disturb bats and the challenge it to determine what that disturbance means in practice, hence why it’s best to consult an expert.  

I suspect that property maintenance would be allowed but there might be conditions as when the best time of year to do that work would be, so as to minimise disturbance potential.

Paul

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I’m with you on this Paul, however any disturbance must be notified prior to works commencing and the Conservation officers will then decree how this disturbance will be managed........usually with some expense to ensure the little critters are re-housed  in accommodation appropriate to their status :-)

Iain

 

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