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For The Birds of Acadiana

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For The Birds of Acadiana

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For The Birds of Acadiana is a supporter-funded Avian Rehabilitation Facility in Lafayette, Louisiana

10/30/2026

Before you rake this fall, leave the leaves. 🍂

That leaf litter is winter shelter for the moths, butterflies, bees, and beetles that birds and bats depend on — and it's the same kind of foliage an Eastern red bat can disappear into, disguised as a dead leaf.

Raking leaves into bags sends that whole little world to the curb. Raking them into your garden beds instead — or just leaving one corner of the yard wild — keeps it right where it belongs.

Less work for you. More life for them. That's a pretty good trade.

Found a bird that needs help? Box it gently — dark, quiet, no food or water — and call or text 337-501-4523

10/30/2026

Bat Week, day 7: want bats in your yard? Give them a house.

A well-placed bat house is one of the best gifts you can give Louisiana's bats — a safe, warm daytime roost in a world that's short on hollow trees. Here's how to get it right:

🏠 Mount it on a pole or a building, not a tree — trees stay too shady and give predators a ladder. Twelve to twenty feet off the ground is the sweet spot.

☀️ Face it south or southeast so it catches six to eight hours of sun, morning sun especially. Bats — and mothers raising pups — need a warm house.

🌡️ Here's the Louisiana part: in our heat, a dark box in all-day sun can bake. Go with a lighter color, or pick a spot with morning sun and afternoon shade, so the house stays warm without overheating.

💧 Put it within about a quarter mile of water — a pond, bayou, or even a neighborhood retention pond. Bats drink on the wing and hunt over water.

🕰️ And be patient: it can take a season or two for bats to move in. An empty box the first summer is completely normal, not a failure.

Bigger, multi-chamber houses get used most — and be sure to include a pup catcher, a bit of a mesh basket or pocket below the chambers that catches any pup that slips and lets it climb back up.

Look for plans certified by a bat conservation organization so the design is one bats actually like.

Questions about wildlife? Call or text us at 337-501-4523

10/30/2026

Bat Week, day 6: bat mothers work hard at this.
Bat mothers pour a lot into their babies.

Eastern red bats can have as many as five pups at a time, northern yellow bat mothers usually raise twins, and evening bats have one to three.

In the summer, mothers gather together in warm, sheltered spots called maternity roosts: hollow trees, quiet corners of barns and buildings, and other protected places.

There they raise their pups together, nursing them for their first several weeks until the young bats can fly and hunt on their own.

That slow pace — one litter a year for most species — is exactly why maternity roosts matter so much, and why they shouldn't be disturbed.

A colony scared off a roost in pup season can mean pups left behind before they can fly.

🦇 Species spotlight: Northern yellow bat (Lasiurus intermedius)
These northern yellow pups were in our care during a past pup season, snuggled up together.

The Northern yellow bat is one of Louisiana’s largest tree bats, with yellow-orange fur — and one of the most Louisiana addresses a bat can have: it spends its days hidden in hanging Spanish moss and under the dead fronds of palms along the Gulf Coast.

While some bats raise just one pup, yellow bat mothers usually raise twins, born in late May or early June right there in the moss.

And here's the devoted part: if her roost is disturbed, a yellow bat mother will pick up her pups and carry them to a safer one.

Another reason the kindest thing we can do for roosting bats is simply leave them be.

If you discover bats roosting in a building in the summer, the kindest move is patience: wait until the young are grown and the season has passed.

If you find an injured or grounded bat call us or visit: https://www.forthebirdsofacadiana.com/bats-in-louisiana

Questions about wildlife? Call or text us at 337-501-4523

10/29/2026

This one's for all the folks who've called me this year for tips on getting a hummingbird out of a building or home. Pretty clever trick — though it isn't always this easy.
If you find one trapped indoors, the basics still work best: close the blinds everywhere except one open window or door, hang a hummingbird feeder right at the exit so it has something to fly toward, and give it time. Don't try to catch it by hand. And if it isn't leaving or looks exhausted, call or text us at 337-501-4523

10/29/2026

Sound on for an evening bat with opinions. 🦇
This little one was in our care earlier this year — tucked into a towel, chattering away - during an intake exam.

Evening bats are the beetle specialists of Louisiana: they roost in tree cavities, under loose bark, in Spanish moss, and in bridges, and they spend their nights hunting the beetles and moths that pester our crops and gardens.
Found a bat that needs help? Call or text us first at 337-501-4523 — we'll walk you through what to do, and the full steps are at forthebirdsofacadiana.com/found-a-bat.

10/28/2026

Bat Week, day 5: while we sleep, bats work the night shift.
All of Louisiana's bats eat insects, and night after night they patrol our yards, fields, and bayous eating mosquitoes and other night-flying insects — including serious farm and garden pests.

Two of our most common bats are right at the heart of that work:

🦇 Species spotlight: Evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis)
One of Louisiana's most common bats, full stop. Evening bats roost in tree cavities, under loose bark, in Spanish moss, and in houses and bridges, and they are beetle specialists: in diet studies, spotted cucumber beetles — a genuine pest of corn and soybeans — turn up again and again in what evening bats are eating. If you farm or garden in South Louisiana, this beetle specialist is on your side.

You met a Seminole bat yesterday — the one displaced at a local business after leaf-blowing disturbed its leaf-litter roost. Here's the rest of that species' story:

🦇 Species spotlight: Seminole bat (Lasiurus seminolus)
The mahogany bat. Seminole bats wear deep reddish-brown fur frosted with white at the tips — dark enough that they're often mistaken for their cousins, the red bats.
They live alone, tucked into clumps of Spanish moss and pine branches, and they hunt the edges of woods, clearings, and ponds, eating beetles, moths, true bugs, flies, and even crickets. While northern bats are settling in to hibernate, Seminoles stay on the job: down here in the Deep South they're active all year, flying on any warm winter evening.

Fewer crop pests, pleasanter evenings on the porch, no spray bill. All we have to do is leave the night shift alone to work.

Questions about wildlife? Call or text us at 337-501-4523

10/27/2026

Sound on for a little bat ASMR. 🦇

Meet a Seminole bat. It was found displaced at a local business — most likely tucked into the leaf litter, doing normal bat things, when a maintenance crew came through blowing leaves and unintentionally disrupted it.

Seminole bats are foliage-roosters. They spend their days hidden in leaf litter, Spanish moss, and pine branches.

Disrupting leaf littler can send a roosting bat scrambling with nowhere to go.

Leaving the leaves, whenever possible, is a small kindness with a real payoff.

Found a bat that needs help? Call or text us first at 337-501-4523 — we'll walk you through what to do, and the full steps are at forthebirdsofacadiana.com/found-a-bat.

10/27/2026

Bat Week, day 4 — look at this wing. 🦇

On the left, this Brazilian free-tailed bat's wing when it came into care — a wound right where the wing meets the body. On the right, the same wing now: closed up, clean, healing. This is what progress looks like, one careful day at a time.

And it's a good reminder of how these stories start: with someone who found a bat and made the call.

If you find a bat on the ground, in your house, or somewhere it shouldn't be, you can be the reason it makes it:
• Call or text us first at 337-501-4523 — we'll walk you through containing it safely, without anyone touching it bare-handed.
• Keep children and pets back.
• If anyone has a bite or a scratch — or a bat spent time in a room with a sleeping person, a child, or anyone who can't say whether it touched them — contact a medical provider right away.
• Don't let it go before you call — a bat that may have touched a person or a pet may need public health testing first.

For the full step-by-step on containing a bat safely, it's all on our website: https://www.forthebirdsofacadiana.com/found-a-bat

That's it: one call, and you're the bat's hero.

10/26/2026

Bat Week, day 3:
Bats are the only mammals on Earth that truly fly.

Squirrels glide. Bats fly — powered, flapping flight, steering themselves through the night. And the wing doing it is built almost exactly like something you know well: a hand.

A bat's wing is a thin membrane stretched over greatly elongated finger bones.
Spread your own fingers wide and picture a delicate web of skin between them, and you've got the basic blueprint.

The name scientists gave bats — Chiroptera — even means "hand-wing."

🦇 Species spotlight: Eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis)
Here's a neighbor you've probably looked straight at without seeing.

Eastern red bats are tree bats — they don't live in caves or attics.
They roost alone out in the open foliage of trees, hanging by one foot, curled up in their furry tail membranes, rust-red and perfectly disguised as a dead leaf or a pine cone swaying in the breeze.

Bat Conservation International calls them North America's most abundant tree bats.

They're among the first bats out in the evening, often hunting moths around streetlights and along woodland edges — and unlike most bats, red bat mothers often raise twins, sometimes more.

Beautiful, beneficial, and nearly invisible. That's a pretty good neighbor.

Questions about wildlife? Call or text us at 337-501-4523

10/25/2026

Bat Week, day 2:
How does a bat catch a moth in total darkness?

It listens its way there. Bats send out high-pitched calls — most far above what human ears can hear — and read the echoes that bounce back. From those echoes, a bat can tell how far away something is, how big it is, what shape it is, and which way it's moving. All of it in the dark, on the wing. As a bat closes in on an insect, its calls speed up into a rapid burst scientists call a "feeding buzz" — that's the moment of the catch.

🦇 Species spotlight: Brazilian free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)

If you've watched bats stream out from under a bridge or out of a building at dusk in a Louisiana town, you've probably met this one. Brazilian free-tailed bats are very common in Louisiana and real city bats — they roost in large colonies in bridges, stadiums, and buildings, and their tails poke out past the wing membrane, which is where "free-tailed" comes from. Their favorite food is moths, including moths whose caterpillars damage farm crops — so that dusk fly-out over town is the night shift clocking in.

The night sky over South Louisiana is full of hunting calls we'll never hear — and our fields and porches are better for it.

Questions about wildlife? Call or text us at 337-501-4523

Address

BIRD/BAT DROP-OFF LOCATION: 216 Cambridge Drive
Lafayette, LA
70503

Opening Hours

Monday	7am - 7pm
Tuesday	7am - 7pm
Wednesday	7am - 7pm
Thursday	7am - 7pm
Friday	7am - 7pm
Saturday	7am - 7pm
Sunday	7am - 7pm

Telephone

+13375014523

Website

https://www.forthebirdsofacadiana.com/

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