Sports

Learn to Make Bat Houses

Join the Southbury Land Trust on Sunday, April 10 for the afternoon at Phillips Farm. 

Beginning at 1:30, meeting at the farm’s large red barn, Flanders Nature Center’s Dianne Parmelee will teach participants how to make bat houses.    Dianne is the perfect instructor for this activity being that she’s a multi-tasking biologist, crafter, farmer, teacher and nature lover.  The program is suitable for everyone even families with children as young as kindergarten.  Why bat housing?  Traditionally, bats have roosted in trees and caves; they have adapted to living in bat houses, because fewer trees and caves are available to them.  Also, little brown bats are strictly insectivorous and consume large quantities of night-flying insects, including midges, moths, and disease carrying mosquitoes.  A little brown bat may consume as many as 600 insects per hour! 

Not interested in the bat house project?  A comprehensive three-mile trek of the sweeping uplands, fields, and forest will be available for hikers.

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There will be food and drink for all.  Independent strolling around the farm is encouraged.  There will probably be mud, so boots are in order.

Southbury Land Trust Phillips Farm Preserve is located on Sanford Road which can be accessed off of Jeremy Swamp Road nearly across from Curt Smith Road.  Look for the orange cones. 

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The hiking is free, the bat house building is $20 for SLT members and $25 for non-members.  For further details or directions, call the Southbury Land Trust at 203-264-4441.  Please call to register for bat building, space is limited!  Heavy rain cancels.


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