Kansas’s 34 silver-haired bat records mark the state as flyover country in the most literal sense. Reports spike in May and again in September and October, the twin pulses of a migratory bat passing between its northern breeding forests and southern wintering grounds, and the summer months between them are nearly empty. Morton County, in the southwest corner, leads with 14 records.
A tree bat working the plains corridors
Silver-haired bats are forest animals: solitary roosters that spend the day under loose bark or in an old woodpecker hole, then hunt insects over water and clearings after dark. In Kansas that life runs along the wooded ribbons of the Arkansas and Cimarron rivers, which is why the record cluster leans west through Ellis, Thomas, Rooks, and Decatur counties. The big wetlands help too. Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira draw clouds of insects, and migrating bats follow the food.
Two peaks, one story
Nine records in May, 20 across September and October, and nothing at all in June, July, or August: that’s the signature of a passage migrant, present while traveling and gone in between. The newest Kansas record, from late March 2026, fits the same pattern, a bat pushing north ahead of the leaves. Records like these map a migration route more than a population.
Status in Kansas
NatureServe assigns the species an SNA rank in Kansas, the category used for migrants that don’t breed here, and the bat is native and globally secure. The genuine concern for silver-haired bats everywhere is wind energy: they’re among the bats most often killed at turbines, and Kansas’s windy plains are filling with them. Each documented passage record helps define when the corridor is busiest.
Full species profile
