For my personal project, I am studying bat houses and their benefits for both bats and humans. I have been working at the OBC Bat Zone for several years and I have come to believe that bats are very important to the environment. With environment as my AOI, I will research and show how bats are vital to green efforts such as organic farming and control of insects. A single big brown bat, a creature smaller than your palm, can eat between 600 and 1000 mosquito sized insects insects every hour for up to 6 hours every night. That's almost 6,000 bugs per bat per night. Not only do they get rid of the mosquitoes, bats eat many other types of insects such as crop bugs which would multiply immensely if left unchecked. This makes them vital to organic farmers who rely on bats destroy the insects instead of using pesticides.
My goal for this project is to build three bat houses and hang them up, ideally with at least one at the IA. In order to accomplish this, I will need to build the bat houses before the end of October so that I can hang them before it gets cold after Novemer. With that done, I will work of the research and presentation parts of the personal project until its due date at the end of the semester
If I have managed to create and hang the bat houses, having found people who are sympathetic to bats or having converted people to see them in a better light, I will consider this a success since I will not be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the houses in any location until the spring.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
October 16 and 17, 2012 - Catching Up & Prezi
As you may have noticed, this blog does not always run in chronological order. This is because earlier on in the project, I would spend a day or an evening at just building my bat houses and I wouldn't have the time afterward to blog about it. Therefore, I have been writing backlogged journal entries. They are accurate as every time I worked on the project I wrote it down on my whiteboard, they just need to be transferred to cyberspace. This experience has taught me one important lesson: no matter what, always keep up with journals because they just keep multiplying if you miss doing them. Classes give material for a post, as well as any time I may spend at this project after school or over the weekend.
In that vein, today, October 17, I also rediscovered my Prezi account from last year and created a new Prezi as per the technology section of this project. It talks briefly about my project, AOI, how much I have accomplised thus far and how much I have left to do. Prezi has changed since the last time I used it, so I am still figuring some things out for the next time I use it. I used to think it was just powerpoint with different transitions and, since I have spent a lot of time making power points, I preferred that tool. However, this time, I found Prezi much more manageable and clear and I am now more open to using it in the future.
This is my Project Prezi:
In that vein, today, October 17, I also rediscovered my Prezi account from last year and created a new Prezi as per the technology section of this project. It talks briefly about my project, AOI, how much I have accomplised thus far and how much I have left to do. Prezi has changed since the last time I used it, so I am still figuring some things out for the next time I use it. I used to think it was just powerpoint with different transitions and, since I have spent a lot of time making power points, I preferred that tool. However, this time, I found Prezi much more manageable and clear and I am now more open to using it in the future.
This is my Project Prezi:
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Bat Houses at School
During class several weeks ago, I had a discussion with my teacher about where to put my bat houses and how best to get them there. In order to best attract bats, bat houses should be located 15 feet off the ground facing southeast on a pole or the side of a building. This way, they will receive the maximum amount of sunshine every day, keeping the breeding colonies that live in them over the summer warm. We agreed that it would be really nice if I were able to post at least one house on the side of the IA and Mr. Pagnani said that he would ask the vice-principal, Mr. Smith, about it as soon as possible.
The next class, Mr. Pagnani told me the results of his conversation. Mr. Smith was not adverse to putting my houses on the side of the building, however he was concerned that the school health inspectors would consider bats "rodentia" and would not approve of attracting them to the school grounds. Aside from the fact that bats are not rodentia as they are chiroptera, more closely related to primates than rodents, this is a valid concern. Bats are considered rabies vectors in the state of Michigan because, despite the minute percentage of the bat population carrying the disease, sick bats are often picked up by humans, making them bite in self defence and spread rabies. Bowers Farm, the educational farm near the IA has had a case of rabies in the last ten years. Thus, school officials may be very leery of bats in the viscinity of a school. It is Mr. Pagnani's opinion that I should hang them one up anywayas it is "simpler to ask forgiveness than permission." However, I am worried that if the house is found after bats have moved in in the spring we will still have to take it down and that could hurt or kill all of the babies in the entire colony. We are now looking for who to ask in order to place the house legally and Jessica Fabian, the head of animal care at the OBC has promised to help me find alternate places to hang the houses if the IA should fall through.
The next class, Mr. Pagnani told me the results of his conversation. Mr. Smith was not adverse to putting my houses on the side of the building, however he was concerned that the school health inspectors would consider bats "rodentia" and would not approve of attracting them to the school grounds. Aside from the fact that bats are not rodentia as they are chiroptera, more closely related to primates than rodents, this is a valid concern. Bats are considered rabies vectors in the state of Michigan because, despite the minute percentage of the bat population carrying the disease, sick bats are often picked up by humans, making them bite in self defence and spread rabies. Bowers Farm, the educational farm near the IA has had a case of rabies in the last ten years. Thus, school officials may be very leery of bats in the viscinity of a school. It is Mr. Pagnani's opinion that I should hang them one up anywayas it is "simpler to ask forgiveness than permission." However, I am worried that if the house is found after bats have moved in in the spring we will still have to take it down and that could hurt or kill all of the babies in the entire colony. We are now looking for who to ask in order to place the house legally and Jessica Fabian, the head of animal care at the OBC has promised to help me find alternate places to hang the houses if the IA should fall through.
My Bat House Plans
After researching for simple and effective bat house plans online and through friends in the Organization for Bat Conservation, I found this video from which I based the plans for my first bat house. The man in the video is the head of the Organization of Bat Conservation, Rob Mies and I discovered it on the OBC webpage, so I think it is a credible plan.
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