Indiana big brown bats use buildings, hollow trees, and forest edges, making the developed margins of Indiana Dunes and Pokagon and the open woodland at Kankakee Sands plausible viewing areas after sunset. July and August produce the strongest record signal, when maternity colonies are active and young bats join evening flights.
The 156 iNaturalist records document encounters, not bat abundance. Roost discoveries and grounded bats are much more likely to be photographed than healthy animals overhead, and acoustic detections are mostly absent, so Indiana’s visual-record map substantially underrepresents routine activity.
Full species profile
