Evening bats favor lowland woods near water, and the record clusters at Mingo National Wildlife Refuge and Big Oak Tree State Park reflect exactly that kind of bottomland habitat in the bootheel. Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge, in north-central Missouri, adds open water next to mature trees, a combination that lets the bats forage over the lake at dusk while roosting nearby in bark crevices.
The record count shows two peaks, one in May and a larger one spanning September and October, likely capturing spring roost emergence and a fall period when young bats disperse and survey activity often picks up. GBIF supplies the bulk of the data (386 of 389 records), with iNaturalist contributing a smaller share (73), suggesting formal acoustic and capture surveys still outweigh casual photography for this fast-flying, hard-to-photograph species. NatureServe ranks the Missouri population S4, Apparently Secure. As with any bat tallied mostly through survey effort, the total marks documented encounters, not a count of animals using the state’s wetland forests.
Full species profile
