Eastern Red Bat

Similar Species:
Hoary Bat is large, browner, more frosted. Seminole Bat is deep mahogany brown. Yellow bats are yellowish, with fur only on basal half of interfemoral membrane, none on outer half.

Breeding:
Mates in fall, apparently often on the wing. 3 or 4 young born among foliage about mid-June.

Habitat:
Forest, forest edges, and hedgerows. Roosts among foliage, usually in trees.

Range:
Across s Canada and most of U.S. east of Rockies.

By day, this solitary bat hangs 4 to 10 feet (1-3m) above the ground among dense foliage that provides shade from above and at the sides but is open below, allowing a downward fall into flight. Emerging early in the evening, these fast fliers often use the same route each night in foraging for many kinds of insects, especially moths, beetles, plant hopper, leafhoppers, ants, and flies. On two different occasions, radio-tracking of females for several nights in Indiana revealed that the bats would remain in the same general vicinity of 2 acres or so, but would roost in different trees on different nights, It is possible to identify the Eastern Red Bat, one of the few mammals in which coloration differs between make and female, on the wing before dusk. Occasionally it alights on vegetation to pluck off insets. Red bats commonly have three or four offspring at a time, and are the only bats with four nipples. Females with young usually roost 10 to 20 feet off the ground. While evidence indicates that the young are not carried about during flight, females with young attached are often found on the ground; most likely they have been blown down or scared out of a tree by a predator and were unable to take off due to the weight of the young. This species migrates, often in flocks, to the southern parts of its range for the winter, where it hibernates. It sometimes emerges from hibernation on warm days, but whether it feeds at these times in the northern parts of it range has yet to be determined. It does fee in  winter in the Dismal Swap of Virginia and North Carolina.