Big brown bat ranks sixteenth among Missouri’s recorded mammals and carries an S4 NatureServe status, apparently secure, in a state whose Ozark caves make it one of the more bat-friendly regions in the country. Mark Twain National Forest and Ozark National Scenic Riverways offer river-and-woodland flyways for foraging, while Ha Ha Tonka State Park’s karst country, sinkholes, caves, and a large spring, sits close to the kind of roost sites this species uses for both summer shelter and winter hibernation.
October is by far the strongest month in the record set, roughly double most other months. That lines up with fall swarming, when big brown bats gather in large numbers near cave entrances before settling in to hibernate, a behavior that makes them briefly far easier to detect than during the rest of the year. All 287 records come from GBIF rather than iNaturalist.
Full species profile
