Maine’s open occurrence databases hold just 15 records of the eastern red bat, most of them iNaturalist entries logged along the coast. That’s a documentation gap, not proof the bat is scarce here. A solitary, tree-roosting bat that hides as a curled dead leaf is one of the hardest mammals in Maine to record at all.
A leaf-mimic on the move
Eastern red bats don’t cluster in caves or attics. Each one hangs alone by a single foot, wrapped nose to tail in its own furred membrane, tucked into dense foliage where its rusty coat reads as a dead leaf to anything passing below. Maine’s Down East refuges, Acadia, Rachel Carson, and Petit Manan, sit along the species’ path as it moves down the Atlantic coast each fall, and Maine’s records peak in August and September, right when that southbound migration gets underway. Records fall off again by November, when the bat has largely cleared out for warmer country instead of hibernating through a Maine winter.
Near the edge of its range
Maine sits close to the northern edge of the eastern red bat’s range, and the species needs mature deciduous trees, oaks, elms, sycamores, with a canopy dense enough to hide a roosting bat from daylight predators. That kind of hardwood cover is patchier Down East than farther south and west, which likely helps explain why records stay sparse here even in a state with plenty of forest overall.
Status in Maine
NatureServe ranks the eastern red bat SU in Maine, meaning there isn’t yet enough data to assign it a firm status, though it’s treated as native and isn’t flagged as introduced by USGS. Globally it holds a G3 rank, vulnerable, a reminder that even a widespread migratory bat can face real pressure from things like wind turbine strikes during its long seasonal journeys.
Full species profile
