Washington’s 46 western small-footed myotis records belong to the dry side. Douglas, Yakima, and Grant counties hold the core, matching the cliffs, rimrock, and canyon walls of the Columbia Basin, and the named search areas, Hanford Reach National Monument and Columbia National Wildlife Refuge, sit in that same shrub-steppe country.
A crevice bat of arid rock
This is one of the smallest bats in the West, weighing only a few grams, and it roosts not in attics or foliage but in tight rock spaces: cracks in cliff faces, gaps under loose slabs, caves, and abandoned mines. It emerges after dark to hawk small moths, beetles, and flies over dry gullies and canyon rims.
A winter spent in deep torpor
Washington’s records run from April through September and stop entirely from October through March. The bat hibernates, spending the cold months in caves and mines where it can hold a low body temperature for weeks at a stretch, so its summer presence and winter disappearance are two halves of the same annual rhythm.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the western small-footed myotis S4, Apparently Secure, in Washington, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
