The long-legged myotis is one of the larger bats in the western United States, and in New Mexico its records cluster around conifer country: Gila National Forest, Rockhound State Park, and the Florida Mountains. Nearly all of that record comes from museum and survey data rather than photographs. Of the 1,024 New Mexico records on file, only 5 come from iNaturalist; the rest are GBIF specimen entries, so this is a species biologists have documented more than casual observers have photographed.
Records jump sharply in June and July, when totals run many times higher than the rest of the year. That spike likely tracks summer bat surveys and roost counts more than any real seasonal boom in numbers. New Mexico rates the species S4, Apparently Secure, under NatureServe’s scale; wildfire and forest change in the mountains it favors are the bigger long-term concern than any one year’s record count.
Full species profile
