North Dakota’s little brown myotis records concentrate around the prairie pothole wetlands and shallow lakes of J. Clark Salyer, Chase Lake, and Des Lacs National Wildlife Refuges, exactly the kind of open water this bat needs for hunting.
It hunts by echolocation low over ponds and slow water, picking off mosquitoes and midges by the thousand each night. With few natural caves in this part of the state, it likely leans more on barns, bridge joints, and building crevices for roosting than bats do farther east.
Records are rare here, clustering from May through July, which lines up with the bat’s active summer season rather than any hint of a wintering site. White-nose syndrome hasn’t been confirmed in North Dakota yet, but the disease has emptied so many hibernating colonies elsewhere that every western record adds to what’s known about the species’ remaining range.
Full species profile
