Safe place for bats
Building bat boxes
Together with Landschapsbeheer Flevoland, the Green Ambassadors have built bat boxes. These boxes provide a safe place for bats in Lelystad to roost and sleep during the day.
A safe place for the bat
Bats like to use hollow trees as their habitat. In our young polder, however, the number of hollow trees is limited. Cavity walls are also a favourite haunt of bats. The insulation of existing old houses and the construction of new well-insulated houses means that bats have fewer safe places to roost and sleep in a colony or alone. A bat box can then be a good alternative. Together with Landschapsbeheer Flevoland, the Green Ambassadors have therefore built 20 bat boxes. Some of the boxes will be used as compensation in places where bats lose their permanent homes.
Wooden bat boxes look like hollow trees
It is best to hang bat boxes about 3 to 4 metres high. Then no one can reach them and the bats can fly in and out easily. A bat box is made of thick rough planks. This minimises temperature differences. A bat box consists of a 60 cm long back wall. This is the approach board. On top of this is a 40 cm long board with 1.5 cm space between which the bats crawl. They land on the board and crawl up through the narrow gap, all the way to the ridge of the box. At the ridge, the bats turn around so they can hang upside down. Because rough wood is used, they can hold on well. Bat boxes are mainly used as summer homes by small groups of bats. Male bats stay alone or in small groups. But very occasionally large groups stay In a bat box and up to 50 bats can stay there.
