Eastern red bat reports in DC scatter across leafy, tree-lined spots: Rock Creek Park, the wetland forest at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, the collections at the U.S. National Arboretum, and the wooded shoreline of Theodore Roosevelt Island. That spread fits a bat that roosts in foliage rather than in caves or buildings.
Instead of hibernating underground like many bats, the eastern red bat wraps itself in a tree’s leaves during the day, its reddish fur making it look like a curled dead leaf hanging from a branch. Each fall it migrates south much like a bird would, rather than sleeping through winter close to home, which likely thins out DC’s records once temperatures drop.
Only 36 records have been logged across the whole city, so this is a genuinely thin dataset spread over four separate sites rather than a real map of where the bat actually lives. A tree-lined block with zero reports may simply be a block nobody’s looked at closely after dark.
Full species profile
