New York’s records for the eastern red bat cluster on Long Island, with smaller counts at Fire Island National Seashore, Watkins Glen State Park, and Adirondack Park, 446 records total. It’s an occasional presence in the data, and when those records show up matters as much as where.
A coastal flyway, not just a home range
This bat doesn’t hole up in a cave for winter. It migrates south each fall much like a bird does, and Long Island’s south shore and barrier beaches, Fire Island included, sit directly on that coastal flight path. Migratory tree bats tend to funnel along peninsulas and barrier islands the same way songbirds and raptors do, which likely explains why Long Island carries the heaviest concentration of records in a state where this species is only occasional overall.
Watkins Glen’s leaf-mimic disguise
Away from the coast, Watkins Glen State Park’s deep hardwood gorge offers the kind of dense summer canopy where an eastern red bat hangs by one foot, wrapped in its own furred tail membrane, looking for all the world like a curled, dead leaf. Adirondack Park sits at the cooler, more marginal edge of that same habitat.
Two peaks that track migration, not just weather
Records rise in April and May as bats arrive from the south, dip through the summer roosting season, then rise again in August and September as bats move south again. That double peak traces an actual migration through the state’s data, not just warmer weather bringing bats out.
Status in New York
NatureServe ranks the eastern red bat S3B, vulnerable as a breeding species, well below the secure rank most of New York’s bats carry. Unlike the cave-hibernating species hit hardest by white-nose syndrome, this one’s biggest modern threat is wind turbine mortality during exactly the migratory flights that put it on Long Island’s beaches each fall.
Full species profile
