New Jersey’s 186 eastern red bat records lean toward the coast, with Ocean, Cape May, and Atlantic counties close behind Essex at the front of the list and places like Island Beach State Park and Cape May Point State Park marking the same shoreline corridor.
A dead leaf that flies away at dusk
Red bats roost alone, hanging by one foot among tree foliage with their rusty, frosted fur curled around them, and by day they pass convincingly for dead leaves. Even where the bat is common it is easy to overlook, since it neither gathers in colonies nor shelters in buildings. Inland records from Belleplain State Forest and the pinelands of Wharton State Forest show it hunting over forest openings and water as readily as along the shore.
A migrant moving through on the flyway
Eastern red bats are long-distance travelers, and New Jersey sits squarely on their coastal route. The state’s two reporting crests, March through April and again from August into October, match the spring and fall passages, when migrants move along the Atlantic shoreline and funnel through the same cape and barrier-island geography that concentrates migrating hawks and songbirds. Summer reports between the peaks belong to the bats that stay to raise their young in New Jersey’s trees.
Status in New Jersey
NatureServe ranks the eastern red bat S3, Vulnerable, in New Jersey, and G3 across its full range, an unusual combination of local and global concern. The species is native to the state, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous.
Full species profile
