Eastern red bat

Eastern red bats roost alone in the canopy of trees and shrubs, never in caves and rarely in buildings. Hanging from a leaf stalk by one foot, wrapped in their furred tail membrane, they look so much like a dead leaf or a pine cone that most people walk past them.

They hunt in the open: over fields, along forest edges, around street lights, and above treetops, taking moths and other insects in flight. Each bat patrols a regular route and often returns to the same feeding area night after night.

Many red bats in the north migrate south for the winter, and in the Southeast they are present all year. In cold weather some hibernate in the leaf litter on the forest floor, which is why they are sometimes found on the ground in winter and early spring, and why fire and leaf blowers can disturb them.

A single eastern red bat can eat a large share of its body weight in insects on a summer night, and moths — including the adults of caterpillars that feed on crops and trees — are the main part of that. Across a landscape, tree bats like this one take a great many insects that nothing else is hunting at that hour.

They are also one of the few bats that regularly raise more than one young at once. A mother red bat carries litters of up to four pups, and has four nipples to feed them, where most North American bats have a single pup a year.

Mating — late summer and autumn, often in flight; the female stores sperm through the winter
Fertilisation — in spring, once she emerges from winter torpor
Gestation — about 80 to 90 days after fertilisation
Birth — late May to early July, litters of one to four pups
Nursing — pups cling to their mother at first, then are left hanging in the roost while she feeds
Flight — at three to six weeks old
Independence — by about five to six weeks, in mid-summer
Lifespan — not well recorded in the wild; a few years is typical for tree bats

• Look before you trim: red bats roost in ornamental shrubs, hedges and fruit trees, and hedge cutting in summer can drop mothers and pups to the ground.
• Leaf blowers and yard fires in winter can disturb bats sheltering in leaf litter.
• Cats kill many red bats that roost low in shrubs; keeping cats indoors helps.
• A red bat on the ground in daylight is in trouble and should not be touched with bare hands; bats are rabies vector species, even though most individual bats are not rabid.
• Wind turbines kill large numbers of migrating tree bats, including this species.

• A bat on the ground is healthy and will fly away if left. A grounded red bat is usually cold, injured, exhausted or a pup that has fallen, and it may die where it lies; it needs a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, and nobody should pick it up with bare hands.
• All bats live in caves. Red bats almost never enter caves; they live their whole lives among leaves.
• Bats get tangled in people's hair. Bats fly with great precision and have no interest in hair; a bat swooping close is catching an insect.
• A bat hanging in a shrub by day must be sick. Red bats sleep in the open like this by design, and a healthy one is best left alone.

• Seminole bat
• Hoary bat
• Northern yellow bat
• Big brown bat