Bats on ceilings or walls can be easily caught with fish nets or cardboard boxes and released outside. Another option is to open windows and outside doors, which will cause the bat to seek refuge outside the house. Big brown bats are known to eat spotted cucumber beetles, June bugs, stinkbugs and leafhoppers, all of which are destructive to crops, gardens, and landscape plants. Solitary bats tend to spend the day in the foliage of trees, under shaggy bark, or in tree cavities and crevices. The red, silver-haired, and hoary bats are three of West Virginia's common solitary bats.
Many solitary bats migrate southward for winter or hibernate in buildings and tree cavities.
Bats are mammals, and their young are born from May through July. From late April until they hibernate, bats eat thousands upon thousands of mosquitoes, tree bugs, beetles, moths, flying ants, mayflies, caddis flies, etc. Bats are experts at flying in the dark and through narrow, difficult passages. They can locate tiny insects by use of squeaking sounds that are emitted and bounce back to be picked up by their ears. This sonar system is similar to radar and is called echolocation.