Maine has only 17 records of the silver-haired bat, one of the sparsest counts in this atlas, but that scarcity fits an animal built to be hard to catch on record: solitary, migratory, and roosting alone under bark rather than in colonies anyone might stumble across.
A coastal flyway in late summer
Records here spike sharply in July and August, the same window when silver-haired bats undergo the long-distance fall migration and swarming behavior that precedes breeding. Maine’s Down East coast, where records concentrate near Acadia, Rachel Carson, and Petit Manan, sits along a natural Atlantic flyway, so summer records more likely capture bats passing through or staging for that journey than a settled local population.
Forest edges near water
This bat hunts over forest openings, streamsides, and pond edges, where insects concentrate at dusk, and it roosts under loose bark or in tree cavities in mature woods nearby. Maine’s coastal refuges offer exactly that mix of mixed woodland and water edge, even though they sit outside the deep conifer core of the North Woods where the species also occurs farther inland.
Status in Maine
NatureServe lists the silver-haired bat as SU in Maine, unrankable for lack of data, though it’s treated as native and isn’t flagged as introduced. Globally, it holds a G4 rank, apparently secure, so this bat’s real Maine story is less about how many exist here and more about how easily a solitary, bark-roosting migrant slips past detection altogether.
Full species profile
