Washington Bat Conservation Group

05/31/2026

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Your Yard at Midnight Runs a Pest Control Operation That Starts When You Go to Bed.
Here's the Roster.

Right now — at this time of year, after full dark — your yard has a crew working that you've never seen and never hired.

The toad stations herself at the base of the porch step. She doesn't chase. She waits. When an insect crosses her line of sight — a moth, a beetle, a slug — she lunges. Her tongue is fast enough to catch a fly. She eats a hundred or more insects per night.

The bat arrives at dusk and works until midnight. She catches mosquitoes, moths, beetles, and mayflies in flight. A single bat eats several hundred insects per night, though the exact number varies by species and prey size.

The ground beetles emerge from under every rock, board, and mulch pile. Each one patrols a section of garden, eating its body weight in slugs, aphids, and cutworm larvae.

The garden spider sits at the center of a web she rebuilt tonight — she ate the old one and spun a new one in under an hour. Every moth that hits the web is her income.

The screech owl drifts through on silent wings, taking mice from the edges.

Five species. All active from dusk to dawn. All consuming the insects and rodents you'd otherwise be paying to remove. None of them charge. None of them require an application. They just need you to turn off the porch light and leave the leaf litter alone.

05/26/2026

Learn all about Bats! FREE workshop!

June 8th, 6:30-8:00 pm, Tukwila Community Center

Join Bats Northwest and Green Tukwila for a wildly fun bat workshop (yes—Sky Puppies! 🦇) at the Tukwila Community Center!
Discover the secret lives of local bats—how they help our ecosystems, why they’re way cooler than you think, and simple ways you can support them right in your neighborhood.

Register at www.Tukwilawa.gov/greentukwila scroll down page 1/2 way.

Bats Northwest

05/22/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1SqNPX6rZF/

A porch light left on overnight in May burns through the energy reserves of moths that can never eat again.

Luna moths, polyphemus moths, cecropia moths — the giant silk moths emerging right now — have no functional mouths as adults. Every calorie they'll ever have was packed into the body during the caterpillar stage. A moth circling your porch light for hours is spending a budget it cannot refill.

She navigates by holding a constant angle to the moon. A porch light at close range overwhelms the system. She locks on, spirals, and circles until the reserves are gone.

Three changes that cost nothing: amber or yellow bulbs attract far fewer moths than white or blue. Motion sensors instead of all-night illumination. Lights off between ten and dawn during May and June.

The moth at the light isn't a nuisance. She's a pollinator with a week to live.

05/15/2026

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That flicker of wings at dusk that makes you duck isn't something to fear. It's a little brown bat — and she's been eating the insects biting you before you feel them.

Most backyard predators work one target at a time. A bat floods the air with ultrasonic pulses up to 200 times per second, reading the size, speed, distance, and wing-beat pattern of every insect within range simultaneously. She builds a live sonar map of the airspace around her and updates it faster than her prey can change direction.

A single nursing mother eats her own body weight in insects every night — moths, beetles, mosquitoes, gnats — hundreds and hundreds of them before sunrise. A small colony of 150 bats removes enough crop-damaging insects to save local farmers thousands of dollars a season without a single application of pesticide.

🦇 What keeps her near your yard:
- A mounted bat house facing southeast — at least 15 feet up, with 6+ hours of sun to hold warmth
- A water source within a quarter mile — bats drink on the wing, skimming the surface mid-flight
- No bright floodlights aimed at the roost — artificial light disrupts her launch timing and drives the colony out

The mosquito fogger truck that rolls through your neighborhood once a week kills everything — the pests and every bat that ate them. One colony was solving the problem around the clock. The truck solves it for an hour.

The most valuable pest control shift in your neighborhood started at sunset 🌿

05/13/2026

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Two species of bat are flying over your street at dusk right now. Most people don't know they're there — because bats work the shift nobody watches.

A little brown bat weighs less than a quarter. She eats hundreds of flying insects per night — moths, mosquitoes, beetles, mayflies. A northern long-eared bat hunts differently — plucking insects off leaves and bark surfaces instead of catching them in the air 🌿

They use different parts of your property. Little brown bats form maternity colonies in human structures — attics, barns, bat boxes. Northern long-eared bats are tree bats — they roost alone or in small groups under loose bark and in the cavities of dead and dying trees. The bat in your attic and the bat under your bark are different species with different needs.

Both have declined significantly in the eastern US since a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome arrived in 2006. The fungus attacks hibernating bats and wakes them before spring, when there's nothing to eat. Some regional populations have dropped dramatically. The survivors are still flying the same air column — there are just fewer of them.

🦇 What to notice this week:

- Bats flying erratic circuits around streetlights and porch lights at dusk — active hunting. If you see them, your neighborhood still has a population
- A bat entering a gap under the soffit or flashing at dawn — a maternity colony returning after the night's hunt
- A standing dead tree at the edge of your yard — potential roost for northern long-eared bats. Leave snags standing from April through November if they're not a safety hazard

🌱 What helps:

- If you have a maternity colony in your attic, don't evict before late August. Pups born in June can't fly until midsummer — blocking the entrance before then traps them inside
- A bat box on a south-facing wall provides alternative maternity habitat for little brown bats
- Preserve dead trees and dead limbs where safe — both bat species and dozens of other wildlife depend on them
- Skip broad outdoor pesticide spraying during summer evenings — bats eat the insects you'd be spraying for

The bats overhead tonight are doing pest control the whole neighborhood benefits from. The ones in the attic are raising the next generation. Both are worth knowing about 🌿

05/09/2026

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A faint papery rustling behind a soffit at dusk. Something shifting between insulation and roof sheathing. Most people picture rats. Most people call someone before they look up.

I'm a little brown bat. I weigh less than half an ounce — lighter than three quarters stacked together. My wingspan is nine inches. I am not tangled in hair. I am not carrying a plague.

The rabies concern is real but rare. A small fraction of bats carry the virus. My body temperature runs lower than most mammals, which makes it difficult for the virus to establish. Raccoons, skunks, and foxes carry it more frequently — and most people tolerate them in a neighborhood without calling anyone.

I leave the roost at dusk and hunt until dawn. I consume hundreds of insects per night — mosquitoes, moths, beetles, leafhoppers, midges, and flies. I emit ultrasonic calls up to twenty times per second and build a three-dimensional sound map of everything moving in the air around me. I can detect a mosquito-sized insect in total darkness and catch it mid-flight.

I am not blind. I have functional eyes. I echolocate because it's better than vision for catching small insects in the dark — not because something is wrong with me.

Females form maternity colonies in warm, sheltered spaces. Each female produces one pup per year. One. The pup is born in early summer, nurses for several weeks, and begins flying within a month. In a species that can live over thirty years, that reproduction rate is slow. Losing a female means losing decades of pest control.

- Don't touch or handle any bat — not because I'm aggressive, but because any wild mammal should be left alone
- If I'm in a living space, open a window at night and I'll leave on my own
- If I'm in an attic, a bat house mounted on a south-facing wall gives me an alternative roost

The mosquitoes and moths I eat don't come back. The silence in the yard at dusk is the sound of the shift already working.

04/17/2026

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‼️Pup season is nearly here! There is no humane way to exclude a bat colony during baby season! ‼️

While we love bats, we understand not everyone wants to share their home with a colony. However, it is still pup season, and even though the babies born this summer are getting older they still do not know how to fly and are dependent on their mothers for survival.

Humane exclusions must be done after pups are old enough to fly themselves, but before bats may be hibernating. The ideal time to do them is between September and October, while temperatures are still consistently above 60 degrees. If done prematurely, babies and young bats who still cannot fly will be left behind, unable to escape the roost where they will starve to death. Mothers will panic when they realize they can no longer access their babies and often end up inside homes or business or grounded from exhaustion as they frantically try to find a way back into the roost.

If you have bats roosting in your home or business, a humane exclusion is a safe and effective way to allow the bats to leave but not reenter the building, but please wait until the opportune time to ensure not only the safety of the bats, but for you as well.

Follow the link in the comments below to learn more about humane exclusions. If you need further help with a bat colony in your home or business always feel free to contact us!

04/16/2026

An important message from WDFW about our bats.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DbwBr3YqJ/

03/20/2026

https://www.instagram.com/p/DWFYk6LE0vw/?igsh=YTk0d2p0Z3VnYnl4

02/03/2026

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I AM NOT BLIND.
I AM NOT FLYING INTO YOUR HAIR.
I AM NOT A VAMPIRE.

I'm a bat, and almost everything you believe about me is wrong.

MYTH: "Bats are blind"
TRUTH: I can see fine. Echolocation is a BONUS, not a replacement.

MYTH: "Bats fly into your hair"
TRUTH: I can detect a single human hair from 6 feet away with sonar. I'm avoiding you perfectly.

MYTH: "All bats have rabies"
TRUTH: Less than 1% of bats test positive. I'm not more dangerous than a squirrel.

MYTH: "Bats are flying mice"
TRUTH: I'm more closely related to YOU than to a mouse.

MYTH: "Bats drink blood"
TRUTH: 3 species out of 1,400+ drink blood. Zero live in the USA. I eat 1,000 mosquitoes per night.

I save US agriculture $3+ BILLION per year in pest control.
I pollinate plants. I spread seeds. I control disease.

I'm not a monster.
I'm one of the most important animals you've never appreciated.