ALL EQUINE: Bats in Essex County

Well, we did find a bat, or should I say the bat dropped onto someones head from the hay storage room.....was it hibernating or in shock....it didn't move....until it warmed up a bit in the house....see picture....he didn't seem happy. Less than the size of an adult palm. I do not like bats or the idea of bats but they do help keep the mosquitos down in the summer

I found this article about "bats" in essex county
( the picture was taken by meee..and my new canon rebel...great camera)

Bats of Windsor & Essex CountyNorth American bats consume half their weight in flying insects each day and Little Brown Bats can consume 600 mosquitoes in a sin...gle hour. Tropical bats are the key pollinators of such important food plants such as bananas, mangoes, breadfruit, dates, avocados and figs. At one time health risks were associated with bats but histoplasmosis has never been found in Canadian bat colonies. Bats do occassionally get rabies, but less frequently than foxes or skunks. The bat symbol in China represents good luck and happiness. Certainly the beneficial qualities of bats have improved their image in recent years. Bat populations have fallen in North America. Pesticide use, toxic chemicals in house timbers, human disturbance, loss of natural roost sites, loss of habitat, decline in insect prey and new building construction methods (which eliminate potential roost sites) may have contributed to this decline. Some of the large roosts in the United States have fallen over 90% in the past 30 years. The bats lost from just the two largest roosts would have consumed 600,000 lb of insects each night. Twenty-one species of bats are known from Canada of which eight have been recorded in our local county. Only two species are common, Big Brown Bat and Red Bat. Big Brown Bats are common in both urban and rural areas, especially around lights which attract their insect prey (especially June Beetles). Red Bats prefer woodlands but also like to hunt moths and other insects around lights.
Little Brown (Mouse-eared) Bat Myotis lucifugus (photo on gallery page) This common Ontario bat is seldom encountered in our region due to the lack of suitable caves for hibernation. Unlike most small birds and other small mammals, bats are long lived. An Ontario Little Brown Bat lived over 31 years in the wild.

this page cited as:
Pratt, Paul D. 2008. Bats of Windsor and Essex County (Version 24NOV08). Ojibway Nature Centre Home Page. Department of Parks & Recreation, Windsor, Ontario. http://www.ojibway.ca/bats.htm

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Comment by Lucie Burdon on February 6, 2010 at 11:16pm: According the article I copied from the Department of Parks & Recreation, Windsor, Ontario. http://www.ojibway.ca/bats.htm they claim that "Bats do occassionally get rabies, but less frequently than foxes or skunks"...I just don't like the fact that we found one...and I beleive that it was IN THE HAY...don't they usually live in colonies???where are the others....and if the picture I took was a little brown bat that eats insects why the heck are his teeth so big and sharp?? I am a city girl at heart so a bat in the barn is not great news.