West Virginia’s eastern small-footed myotis records cluster in the Allegheny highlands: Monongahela National Forest, New River Gorge, and Blackwater Falls State Park, where rocky outcrops, cliff faces, and cave-riddled ridges give this bat both summer roosts and winter shelter.
This is one of the smallest bats in the East, and it roosts in rock crevices, talus slopes, and cliff faces rather than the tree cavities many other bats use. It forages low over forest streams for small flying insects and tolerates colder hibernation temperatures than most other Myotis species.
Records here are occasional, and reports peak from June through August with a smaller bump in October, tracking the bat’s active foraging season before it settles into nearby caves and mine shafts for winter. The species is imperiled in West Virginia, and its dependence on the state’s karst country makes it worth watching as white-nose syndrome keeps pressuring eastern bat colonies.
