I just read that coddling moths mate at night. So I suspect that bats might be very helpful in controlling the CM population.
I like my bats, anyway. I enjoy watching them swooping around and eating bugs. Now I am thinking I might try to find out how to attract more bats to hang out and party at my place.
A light burning at night inside the orchard would attract night flying bugs and that should lure the bats to the orchard. Right now, they hang out around my front porch light making it safe for me to walk outside at night without getting hit in the face by clumsy moths.
I love ‘my bats’ too. Corresponding with Bat Conservation International [url:3d5brfm8]http://www.batcon.org/[/url:3d5brfm8] I’d placed around 10 bat houses and 3 specially designed brood chambers on fir trees. They’d asked for feedback so periodically I’d check with a mirror, reflecting sunlight up and into them, looking for inhabitants. None, ever… One summer night, while floating on my pond, I traced back a stream of bats emerging from an Alder tree knot hole, 27 if I remember. I’ve since figured - if you’ve natural habitat, they’ll likely avoid the ‘man made’ stuff; if not, it may be worth the effort to put up some ‘homes.’
One thing BCI relayed to me was a height of 15 feet with the houses facing morning sun. They like heat! One successful method for others was wrapping thick roofing tar-paper around a power pole (I wouldn’t wrap an in-use pole) with the bottom ‘flared out’ and open. They said the bats would press up between the groves and adjust their position, moving to either side as the sun angle changed. And, being solid black it acquired the heat they apparently want.
On an HOS picnic & field trip the fellow at ‘Bird Haven’ (in Stayton, Oregon) went as far as building a ‘bat cave.’ It was an above ground block building painted back, with ‘slits’ for them to enter and exit … he likely spent thousand$ - but no bats. Instead, they preferred the upper story of his barn, where he eventually placed bat ‘brood chambers’ similar to the ones I’d bought. He had bats! …and a concrete conversation piece 
What I’ve noticed, like about everything else, bats are very territorial and will only ‘allow’ enough in a given ‘fly zone’ to efficiently deplete its air-born insects. For a couple years I ran a large “Bug Buster†electronic bug zapping device hung in a grape arbor 150 feet from the house (it was loud!). It attracted both moths and bats… but I soon read that such a device killed ‘good insects,’ too. And, since it apparently didn’t get all the moths, it definitely attracted them – to my orchard! For those two reasons, I haven’t used it in a decade.
So, just as you’d be attracting bats, you’d also be attracting bugs! And if the bats didn’t get all the bugs, or, the bugs only took flight after mating & egg laying… even worse. I’ll have bats throughout the night, I suspect their radar keeps them fed and happy. And with lights basically off, the neighborhood bugs stay put ...as I’m also $aving on electricity 
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Bats eat enormous amounts of night-flying insects, especially moths and beetles. In one study, a single little brown bat ate 1200 mosquito-sized insects in an hour. The researchers put an electronic bug zapper to the same test. It killed 50 insects in an hour. So one bat is worth 24 bug zappers. Most bats like to roost in colonies, so if you can attract a colony of 30 bats, that is like having 720 bug zappers.
Bats are very particular about their roosting spaces (see "Criteria for successful bat houses" here: http://batcon.org/index.php/get-involve ... house.html). In the wild (in the Pacific Northwest), their most common natural roost is under exfoliating (peeling) bark in tall, dead trees that get a lot of sun exposure and are near water. They also use tree cavities and rock crevices. Unfortunately those sites are increasingly rare, so they have adapted to use man-made structures that provide similar conditions. But in general bats are always in the market for more and better roosting space, because their natural spaces are almost all gone. They also seem to move from roost to roost a lot, so they like to have a lot of choices.
If you live near water or have a pond, stream or lake on your property, it is likely that bats would use a properly built and placed bat house on your property. Here are bats using one of my bat houses:
There are 3 bats in the lower right. I took this photo a couple of weeks ago.
Let me know if you have any bat or bat house questions. This forum is also a great resource: http://www.bathouseforum.org
There are bats flying about my property (and if I happen to leave the door open at night also flying around the inside of my home). I built a small maternity chamber (suitable for 150) but no inhabitants as yet. The first house I had took about four years before they took up residence.
I have to continually remind myself that bats are considered good luck in many Asian cultures. It is probably Euro-centric culture that considers them somehow evil; but then again Bram Stoker did write one very scary book.
The heighth of bat house placement is critical. Bats drop from their "houses" to start their flying. Cats (feral or otherwise) have been seen waiting below some bat houses and swatting/nabbing with their claws dropping bats that come within the cats reach.
Just to add to the experiences here, I put up a bat house 5 years ago and no bats. Its a professionally made bat house in the perfect location as far as the experts that made it told me to, other than the creek is about 100 feet away no closer.
I hope someone someday figures out a "better bat house" so we can all get more of these great bug eaters in our orchards!
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