We try to be ‘au natural’ in our yard with use of chemicals and how we treat wildlife around our home. In fact, our property is a Certified Wildlife Habitat – bringing in lots of birds and pollinators. However, this lack of chemical spraying sometimes brings more mosquitoes. I found out that one of the natural predators of the mosquito is the bat. We knew we already had bats in our area, as we already see them circling around our house every evening scooping up flying insects. My thought – I’ve already made several birdhouses, why not a bat house? Not only does it provide a safe place for the bats to live and raise their young, but it will also help us enjoy our yard with less mosquitoes and less chemicals.

This is a relatively simple project that you could do with your kids over the weekend – whether it’s a bat house or a birdhouse. Also, you can paint them or customize them in any way you like to add some fun and creativity to the project. We customized ours with a hand-burned batman logo, of course.

We’re placing this bat house about 10-20’ up in a bare tree trunk where we’ll have a clear view of the bat house from our deck.