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An update on the bird housing....
The wood duck houses and the mallard nesting tubes show no signs of apparent activity. The smaller chickadee houses dispersed in the woods are mostly vacant, but a couple have wrens living in them (wonderful, easily identified song). The Peterson bluebird houses, tho, are NO VACANCY. Unbelieveable response. We put up six, well spaced and away from the timberline (per spec for attracting bluebirds). 3 have Tree Swallows and 3 have bluebirds. I know that so much of attracting birds is the species and the region, but from my 'hood, these cedar Peterson BB houses are the hot ticket.

an update to a REAL old project that never got completed....
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about 6 years ago, as part of building a buncha bird houses, I also put together a bat house. As goes many of my projects, I came outta the gate like a race horse, but about the 3rd turn, I got distracted and never finished the race. The bat house has been in storage ever since....until now.
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It all started here back in 2007.
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...and winds up here, some 6+ years later. Inspired by Loretta's post:

I added the bat baby catcher to the bottom of the house and provided a trellis of hardware cloth to allow ascension back into the cozy bat abode above.

And, finally, the 2" tubing pole is set into concrete and the new bat digs are displaying a vacancy sign.

I like the baby catcher. I built one about 5 years ago. No bats yet.

Any idea why Dave?

My wife really wants a number of them (2-4) on our 30 acre hay field but the project will get pushed off if we arent going to see any results...

I don't know. I put in an old barn with no results. I occasionally see bats but not many. Of course, it might just be my house building skills.

It could also be the disease going around killing bats that hibernate in caves. Drastic reductions here in Upstate NY. I have two bat houses up under the eaves of the house for three years running, and no takers. I do see a few flying about, but not like it was 5 years ago.

Location really matters for bat houses. If you don't have bats after 5 years, you should consider moving the house. Generally speaking, they like heat.

This site has good info: http://www.batmanagement.com/Batcentral/batboxes/choosingsite.html

It says that in southern locations, mount the houses outside, on a pole, back to back. That way when one side gets too hot, they can move to the other side.

When I had bats in the loft of my barn, they'd move from the East side to the West side depending on where the sun was.

I face my bat houses south. Initially it took a couple of years to get returning residents.

Nice looking set up Brettski!