Silver-haired bats are long-distance travelers, not year-round Ohio residents. They pass through the state on their way between summer roosts farther north and wintering grounds to the south, which is why the 95 records gathered since 2000 cluster around Lake Erie’s wooded shoreline and marshes rather than spreading evenly across the state.
That migratory habit shows clearly in the record pattern: sightings jump in spring and again in fall, with almost none in between during the summer breeding season and a hard drop to zero in winter. Ohio hasn’t assigned the species a numeric NatureServe rank (SNR, unranked), so its records here mostly capture animals passing through rather than a resident population.
Full species profile
