Blackburn College Bat Program

Blackburn College Bat Program A Student-Led Research Program working for WNS Awareness through Data Collection and Analysis, Cons

Coming soon…. The bats are back 🦇 In Illinois, as the weather is warming up, bats will begin to come out of hibernation....
02/22/2023

Coming soon…. The bats are back 🦇

In Illinois, as the weather is warming up, bats will begin to come out of hibernation. Be aware of the signs of bats coming out of home roosts. Fluttering sounds and high-pitched squeaking sounds may be heard within the walls of your house.

Bats will be on the hunt for food as they come out of their hibernation due to only surviving on their food reserves for most of the winter. Bats will then begin choosing their summer roosts, this may include caves, trees, or buildings.


For our celebration 🌳 we had a special delivery this morning from Douglas Designs. Our new Blackburn Bat Program Aware...
04/29/2022

For our celebration 🌳 we had a special delivery this morning from Douglas Designs. Our new Blackburn Bat Program Awareness Signs. These signs will serve as information tools to the public about our research-based bat houses on campus. Including a few rules like, limited noise around bat houses, no movement of the bat houses, and to leave any bats that may be grounded alone. But, this will allow people to know almost exactly where are bat houses are. So keep a lookout on campus for these new signs and don’t forget to look up!

Stoddard Bat House 3/28/22"We want to thank everyone that has been apart of this process. The Stoddard Bat House will se...
03/29/2022

Stoddard Bat House 3/28/22

"We want to thank everyone that has been apart of this process. The Stoddard Bat House will serve as another research tool for our program and others around the state." - Blackburn Bat Program Coordinator, Lexi Hoffman

On 3/28/22, the Blackburn College Bat Program and Grounds Supervisor, Nick McKorkle, constructed our new bat house at Stoddard. After a few months of research our program is hopeful to have this bat house location serve as our Live Feed location that will be finalized in the future. What is special about this bat house is that it is a double-sided bat house, meaning that there are two separate bat houses connected to one pole. This serves as temperature control for our bats, if one side gets 'too warm' for the bats then they can switch to the other bat house that is not directly facing the sun. In total, our bat house will be able to house 170 bats which is about 85 bats per bat house.

Adding another bat house to our college campus will provide awareness for not only our students, but our staff, faculty, community members, and alumni. Thank you all for your support in our program, to learn more visit our website at www.blackburnbatprogram.wordpress.com

Sorry for the wait, but it is definitely worth it!The Midwest Bat Hub has officially sent out reports for the Blackburn ...
02/16/2022

Sorry for the wait, but it is definitely worth it!

The Midwest Bat Hub has officially sent out reports for the Blackburn College Bat Program Hettick Location Bat Detector. The reports contain important information for not only our research program, but for programs all over the world. From 06-22-21 to 09-29-2021, we had 50 active nights of bat detections. This means that over 9,000 total calls were detected throughout the monitoring period. The following data serves as a baseline for ecological interpretation but should not be taken as 100% correct, as the software used to analyze call files can make mistakes. Some rare species that seem to be detected, therefore, might not actually be present.

Big Brown Bat: 237
Silver-Haired Bat: 279
Evening Bat: 2,171
Hoary Bat: 1,069
Eastern Red Bat: 5,323
Gray Myotis: 25

Continue swiping through the post to see more data that was collected. This data will be used to determine the next location for our bat detector and as research for our students here at Blackburn College to look over. Interested in learning more about our bat data collection or the Bat Program in general? Reach-out to our Bat Program Coordinator Lexi Hoffman, or check-out our website at www.blackburnbatprogram.wordpress.com

Thanks again to BatBnB and Nick for allowing this opportunity to happen!
12/05/2021

Thanks again to BatBnB and Nick for allowing this opportunity to happen!

In honor of International Bat Week we have a surprise for you! Yesterday the misty rain stopped long enough that our fir...
10/29/2021

In honor of International Bat Week we have a surprise for you! Yesterday the misty rain stopped long enough that our first bat house setup was put up, meaning we have made our first movement on campus! The Cascade bat house from BatBnB is a single chamber bat house that will comfortably fit around 40-50 bats. It was decided to stain the exterior of the bat house to better absorb heat from the sun. For the Illinois area the recommended color is dark/medium paint. The bat house is facing East in order to receive better sunlight exposure. It is also at the highest peak of our campus barn, within an open flying area, and has nearby trees. We hope to see bats using the house as soon as possible but the reality of our bat house not being used for years is also a likelihood. We would like to thank Nick McKorkle for taking time out of his day and helping us with this project!

If you have any questions about our new bat house, why we chose it, or questions about bats in general, reach out! Or check out our website at www.blackburnbatprogram.wordpress.com

With all the work going into the receiving of funds and approvals of locations for bat houses. Can you guess what the ne...
10/19/2021

With all the work going into the receiving of funds and approvals of locations for bat houses. Can you guess what the next step is in the process of helping raise awareness of bats on campus?

If you guessed putting up a bat house, you are correct. Our BatBnB Cascade bat house arrived, has been stained, and is ready to go at any time. Watch out later this week for the official putting up of the bat house!

If you would like to know more about BatBnB or the Blackburn College Bat Program, checkout our other posts or our website www.blackburnbatprogram.wordpress.com

Welcome to Blackburn College’s Bat Progam Q&A On this post will be basic questions & answers along with an open comment ...
10/06/2021

Welcome to Blackburn College’s Bat Progam Q&A

On this post will be basic questions & answers along with an open comment section to answer any question you have about bats or our program! Feel free to ask openly, or to direct message us.

1.) Where do bats live?
Bats tend to roost in caves, trees, buildings, bridges, and lots of other places. Due to habitat loss bat houses have become a more popular area for bats to live.

2.) What do bats eat?
Depending on the species, and location that a bat is from can change a lot in their diet. The most common diets for bats are insects, fruit, nectar, and fish/frogs.

3.) Why do bats hang upside down?
Bats are adapted to hanging upside down in order to aid them in flight as they must drop down in order to fly, they also are able to hide away easier from predators due to predators normally coming from the ground.

4.) Are bats related to birds?
Bats and birds belong to different animal classes, meaning that while birds give birth to eggs, bats bear live young and feed them milk.

5.) What is guano?
Guano normally refers to bat droppings/feces, which has been used as fertilizer but is now being used more commonly in new products.

We hope to here questions from everyone and provide new learning experiences. If you want to know more, checkout our website or the other posts on our social media platforms.

✅ August 2021, Work Colleges Consortium Experiential Work-Learning Grant Recipient📝 What is this Grant? Grant Descriptio...
08/18/2021

✅ August 2021, Work Colleges Consortium Experiential Work-Learning Grant Recipient

📝 What is this Grant?
Grant Description: The WCC provides grants to faculty and/or staff members to undertake an experiential, creative and/or scholarly research project. The grant projects should enhance the learning environment, support learning outcomes and student development, and promote a model to other educators. The grants are offered to help strengthen the integration and relationship of work-learning on campuses while also supporting the mission of the Consortium. The grant application process occurs in the spring and the grants are awarded to full-time faculty and/or staff currently employed at one of the schools in the Work Colleges Consortium.

🦇 What is the Program doing?
Project Name: Recording Bat Classification for Student Interpretation

Project Description: The Blackburn Bat Program (the Bat Project), was designed and developed to provide opportunities for students to gain knowledge, experience, and connections in the research world. This project will help students get their feet on the ground and their name into a variety of different areas of various research, and provides opportunity for students in a self-guided research program. The developers will focus on real world applications, including White Nose Syndrome infection rates, endangered species groundwork, and unexplored areas of bat research. It will be a great benefit to bat species' and to other research programs. The project will be entirely student run. This experience will allow students to develop skills in project management, effective communication with internal and external constituencies, research methods, and gain an overall increasing knowledge of bats and their role in the environment.

Thank you to the Blackburn College PR Team for taking these amazing photos, they truly capture amazing moments during ou...
08/03/2021

Thank you to the Blackburn College PR Team for taking these amazing photos, they truly capture amazing moments during our presentation.

We want to thank everyone who attended the ‘Let’s Talk About Bats’ Presentation last Wednesday. We also want to thank Be...
08/03/2021

We want to thank everyone who attended the ‘Let’s Talk About Bats’ Presentation last Wednesday. We also want to thank Bee City Carlinville for sponsoring the event and allowing this to happen.

We had a great time at the presentation with lots of interest (27 people in attendance) and questions. Questions that were unable to be answered will be posted on later posts, so keep an eye out for those. If you were unable to make the event or watch the Facebook Live, a recording is available on our page!

Also, congratulations to the two lucky winners of the bat house giveaways. If you were interested in putting up a bat house at the presentation, message us through our Facebook and we will get back to you as soon as possible!

And don’t forget to lookout for pictures from the event coming soon!

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Carlinville, IL

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