This is largely a warm-country bat across the Deep South and Southwest, so North Carolina’s Coastal Plain records, clustered near Pocosin Lakes, Mattamuskeet, and Green Swamp Preserve, sit near the northeastern edge of its range rather than in the heart of it. NatureServe still ranks it Apparently Secure in the state, but the population here is smaller and more scattered than the huge cave and bridge colonies famous farther south and west.
Elsewhere in its range this bat forms colonies that can number in the millions, streaming out of caves at dusk to hunt insects at high altitude and at speeds that outpace nearly every other flying animal. North Carolina almost certainly doesn’t host colonies on that scale, but the same narrow, fast wings and reliance on nightly insect swarms over open Coastal Plain wetlands apply here too.
North Carolina’s records run through the whole year but peak in January through March, an unusual pattern for a species associated with warm-season insect abundance elsewhere. That timing may reflect wintering bats moving through or roosting in the state’s Coastal Plain rather than a true summer breeding presence.
Full species profile
