Common bat-house roosting bat species in North America
August 12 2022 – Jessica Woodend
BIG BROWN BAT
These copper-colored bats are resilient and cold-hardy, which has helped them become common across North America. A small colony from a bat house once caught enough cucumber beetles in a summer to prevent them from laying over 33 million rootworm eggs.
LITTLE BROWN BAT
This species loves bat houses, and they’ll typically travel locally to the nearest suitable cave or abandoned mine for hibernation. Little brown bats have been heavily impacted by white-nose syndrome, resulting in this once-abundant species becoming less common throughout much of its eastern range.
MEXICAN FREE TAILED BAT
The largest colonies live in limestone caves, but smaller colonies frequently live in bat houses. Their diet includes a wide variety of America's most costly crop and yard pests, including corn earworm and armyworm moths. Most free-tails migrate south to over-winter in Mexico and Central America.
EVENING BAT
Evening bats get their name from being one of the first bat species to emerge and go hunting for insects at night. Early bat catches the bug! They are true forest bats and are rarely found in caves. They are found from Wisconsin to Mexico in eastern North America. Most evening bats migrate south in fall .
Photos from Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation
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