Bats in Our Backyard!

We've been here four months and feel quite cozy.  We leave to sit on the mirador at night and watch the sun set behind the mountains, the storm clouds roll in and try and predict if we will get rain that night.  We also love to watch the birds.  There are some beauties here.  There colors are vibrant,  bright red, orange and yellow.  Don't know what they actually are, but some have the sweetest songs  And then of course there are our hummingbirds.  Matt and I have been feeding them religiously from a feeder in our orange tree.  But we've been getting a little frustrated because we've had to refill the feeder every day.  How much can those little things eat?

Well a few nights ago while we in the mirador Matt notice a bird swooping around after dark and he thought that was unusual that it was flying at night.  Then he thought MAYBE it wasn't a bird at all.  He didn't say a word to me.  Then when we were at a friends house a few nights later he noticed the same "birds" sweeping around their yard.  Yep you guessed it, we have a lot of bats here in Lake Chapala, just took Matt and I four months to notice them!  And then the kicker, we found out that bats love hummingbird feeders.  They'll drain them dry every night.  So our little hummingbirds don't eat that much after all.

Last night we watched our terrace very carefully, and sure enough those were bats sweeping around our feeder.  i took the camera outside (although Matt said "you're not going outside with those things are you?") and tried to get a pic, but they were too smart for me.  So instead i found this pic on the internet.....yuck but kind of cool as well.

So the answer is simple.  Put a ziploc bag over the feeder every night and make the bats work for their dinner!