Just Batty

A Green-Wood gardener called my attention to two Eastern Red Bats hanging from maple leaves in the cemetery last week. These were at eye level. Who knows what was further up…. Looking like old leaves or rotten fruit/cones, this is their day camouflage.
I’ve seen the occasional bat in flight in Brooklyn over the years. There are a couple species found in our air space, and closer to the ground. These, Lasiurus borealis, are the most common. November seems an odd time to see them, but then it has been warmer than usual (when do we drop the “than usual” since this is the new usual?). This is not a species that resorts to bat caves, or mass hibernacula, for the winter. Some seem to migrate, but others may stick around, hibernating inside leaf litter or tree trunks. Here’s some more info.
Remember not to handle bats because of the dangers of rabies.

4 Responses to “Just Batty”


  1. 1 Sherry Felix November 29, 2020 at 1:38 pm

    Oooh! i love bats. Nice to see one.

  2. 3 Ewa November 29, 2020 at 5:18 pm

    So nice to see you post pictures again!! Bats rule! Still no bats in the bat house we put up in a tree a few years ago.

  3. 4 Jean Gazis November 30, 2020 at 9:47 pm

    In the last couple of years, WCS research using listening devices to record and identify bat calls found at least 4 species of bats in the Prospect Park Zoo area. There may be a couple more in the larger park space. I believe they were little brown bats, big brown bats, Eastern red bats, and silver bats (? not sure about the exact name). I don’t know if it’s published or an ongoing study.


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s




Share

Bookmark and Share

Join 686 other subscribers
Nature Blog Network

Archives


%d bloggers like this: