Silver-haired bats don’t cluster in caves the way many Massachusetts bats do. They roost alone or in small groups under loose bark or inside cracks in dead and dying trees, a habit that makes them easy to miss even where they’re present. Monomoy Wilderness Area, on the barrier islands off Cape Cod, is the only named site among the state’s 19 records, likely tied to bats passing through on migration.
Most records fall between August and November, with a few in February and March and none from April through July, a pattern that fits a highly migratory tree bat moving through Massachusetts on its way south rather than settling in for the season. NatureServe ranks the species S2, imperiled, here, one of the more precarious bat statuses in the state.
Full species profile
