Virginia’s little brown myotis carries a NatureServe rank of S2, Imperiled, a state-level signal distinct from the species’ global IUCN Endangered listing, and it reflects how hard white-nose syndrome has hit eastern hibernating colonies since the fungus first appeared in a New York cave in 2006. Virginia sits well within the disease’s spread zone, unlike the still largely unaffected colonies in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
Records here are sparse, just 9 since 2000, and every one is an iNaturalist observation, 6 of them also carried in GBIF, so what’s documented comes from people photographing bats rather than from hibernation-site surveys. The county records scatter from Rockingham, Rockbridge, and Wythe in the western valleys east to Charles City on the James River, and wherever it turns up, this bat hunts low over insect-rich open water at night.
Sightings peak in April and May, three each, which lines up with the spring nursery-roost season, though with so few total records that’s a soft signal rather than a firm pattern.
Full species profile
