Edible Garden – Helping Hands

edible garden

FLYING HELPING HANDS

Five reasons why you should like bats (and three reasons why they don’t like you).

WRITTEN BY
CINDIE GEDDES

Bats get a bad rap in the United States, and it’s not even a little bit fair. While much of the rest of the world considers them lucky — from carrying a bat bone in your pocket for good luck (not so lucky for the bat!) to using their images on art, jewelry, and home decorations for good fortune, happiness, and long life — we in the States can’t seem to get past our own misconceptions.

But there are many reasons to like bats, not the least of which is their many benefits in your garden.

Why you should like bats:

1. Bats eat bugs. There are 23 species in Nevada: Little brown, pallid, and long-eared bats are common in the Reno-Tahoe area; most are as small as mice or gerbils. But just one of them can eat as much as 6,000 insects a night, with some consuming up to half their body weight nightly. An average colony can eat more than 100 tons of insects in one season, according to Bat Conservation International. In our area, bats eat mosquitoes, moths, beetles, grasshoppers, locusts, and even centipedes and scorpions. Who needs chemical pesticides when there are bats around?
2. Bats save farmers and gardeners big bucks. According to Death Valley National Park’s Wild Thing Wednesday program, bats are worth more than $3.7 billion here in the U.S. in terms of reduced crop damage and reduced insecticide use. While they mostly eat moths and mosquitoes, bats will eat anything from gnats to large flying beetles, including leafhoppers, cucumber beetles, and flies. Dave Worley, senior biologist at Stantec Inc., a land surveying company, lists this as the No. 1 benefit of bats.
3. Guano (bat droppings) makes excellent fertilizer. Made up of 10 percent nitrogen, 3 percent phosphorus, and 1 percent potassium, bat guano has no fillers and is long lasting. It is good for activating compost, enriching and conditioning soil, and improving drainage and texture. It is a good fertilizer for plants and lawns. Guano also controls nematodes and is a natural fungicide. Use it as a top dressing or mix it with water for deep root improvement. Wet or dry, guano goes further than most other kinds of fertilizer.
4. They’re easy to attract, so you can continue reaping benefits. If you want to attract bats to your property, all you need is standing water and a bat house. A small bat house (such as the one depicted) can house up to 20 bats, which squish together quite socially! For details on how to make your own, visit Batcon.org/resources/getting-involved/install-a-bat-house.
5. Bats are terrific pollinators. Next time you’re drinking a margarita, give thanks to bats — they are the primary pollinators of agave, the main ingredient of tequila. According to Pollinator Partnership (a nonprofit organization that works to protect the health of managed and native pollinating animals vital to North American ecosystems and agriculture), “Though bats in the Nevada-Utah mountains’ semi-desert are not pollinators, bats play an important role in the pollination of agave, organ pipe, and saguaro cacti. The long-nosed bats’ head shape and long tongue allow it to delve into flower blossoms and extract both pollen and nectar.”

Why bats don’t like you:

1. People believe myths about bats. Popular myths that bats are mysterious, hairless, dirty, evil, rabies-carrying, witch-loving, blood-sucking, blind rodents that will get tangled in your hair. That kind of ignorance is a big part of why 16 of North America’s 43 species are on the endangered species list, with another eight being considered for inclusion. (The other big killer is White-Nose Syndrome, a fungus that came over from Europe. U.S. bats have no immunity to it.) In reality, bats are more akin to primates, as we are, than to rodents. Their wings actually are elongated hands, which is why their scientific family is Chiroptera, Latin for flying hand); only their wings are hairless.

While they can carry rabies (at the same rate as other mammals — one half of 1 percent), they do not share the aggressiveness of their cat and dog cousins (so don’t pick up a bat and you’ll be fine). Nor do they have large outbreaks, such as what happens with other species, including squirrels and skunks. Bats are extremely clean and groom themselves similarly to cats. Of the nearly 1,000 species of bats in the world, only three drink blood (and even those do it while animals are sleeping, thereby not hurting the host), and none of those species is found in North America. Bats are accomplished aerial acrobats and do not get caught in people’s hair; we are predators and they fear us, but even if they didn’t, compared to their prey, we are huge and slow-moving — easy to miss. They also do not build nests, instead preferring building eaves, tunnels, mine shafts, adits, and other small dark spaces, and they have excellent vision.

2. We use pesticides and mosquito abatement methods. While mosquitoes are a hassle — and even a potential health hazard — for people, they’re what’s for dinner for bats. Fewer mosquitoes means that bats have to work harder for their meals, and pesticides have been shown to cause long-term detrimental effects onbat species throughout the world.
3. They hate bright lights. One of the best ways to deter bats from your home is to shine a bright light where they might enter. But please, if you are trying to get rid of these lucky flying hands, only do so between March and April, and September through October, so you don’t end up orphaning babies.

Before becoming a full-time writer and publisher (she co-owns Lucky Bat Books), Cindie Geddes was a wildlife biologist. She began working with bats simply because she was tiny enough to fit into the places bats lived, but she fell in love with the social little mammals immediately. That love affair continues to this day.

Extras

Bat resources
The following listing offers great information about the many benefits of bats and how to protect them.

Nevada Division of Wildlife
http://www.ndow.org/uploadedfiles/ndoworg/content/public_documents/wildlife_education/publications/bat_brochure.pdf

Bat Conservation International
http://www.Batcon.org

Organization for Bat Conservation
http://www.Batconservation.org

Want to spot some bats for yourself?

Bat Bridge is one of the best places in the Reno area to see bats. The bridge — on South McCarran Boulevard, near Mill and Greg streets by Main Station Farm, which spans the Truckee River — serves as a temporary home to a colony of Brazilian free-tailed bats, with a population estimated at about 40,000, although the size of the colony varies year by year. The best time to see them is during summer months (June to September) just after dusk, when they are leaving their roost to feed. They eat 30 tons of insects during their stay. Tip: Night-vision goggles really add to the show.

Along waterways with trees also is great for viewing, including areas near Rancho San Rafael Regional Park. They often are mistaken for swallows because both occupy the same spots. However, bat flight appears more erratic than that of swallows, and swallows have a distinctive pointed wing shape whereas bat wings are more blunted.