New Mexico sits at the western edge of the eastern red bat’s range, and the state’s records are correspondingly thin, just 111, far below the hundreds logged in Texas or the Ohio Valley. NatureServe lists it as S3N, Vulnerable, in New Mexico specifically, a sharper conservation concern than its globally secure status suggests.
This bat roosts alone in tree foliage rather than caves, so despite names like Carlsbad Caverns National Park among the places tied to its records, sightings likely come from wooded stretches nearby rather than the caves themselves. Monthly counts jump around with no clean pattern, brief spikes in January, March, and December and almost nothing between, typical of a species detected mostly during migration passes rather than a resident season.
Full species profile
