Tara H

Bats consume a variety of mosquitoes but studies show they are likely a small percentage of their overall diet. Why aren’t bats eating more mosquitoes? Well, they are pretty small, which makes them hard to catch and not very high in calories. A bat flying around at night is probably […]

Are bats the solution to mosquitoes?

7 October 2025 in Behavior tagged agricultural pests / diet / mosquitoes by Tara H

Bats do not use the same bat cave all year round! They have different resting places, called roosts, that they utilize throughout the season depending on their needs. Hibernaculum– A hibernaculum is where some species of bats hibernate through the winter. Hibernacula (plural of hibernaculum) are often caves, mines, or […]

Bats and where they call home

30 October 2020 in Uncategorized by Tara H

Fall is an important time of year for bats as their reproduction cycle begins! As temperatures begin to cool between August and October, bats swarm in the air; circling closely with each other in large groups, often near hibernacula sites. As they swarm, they assess potential partners, mate, and survey […]

Bat Reproduction

16 October 2020 in Uncategorized by Tara H

This field season has certainly been a strange one! COVID-19 postponed our field work a few months later than when we would normally start. For the safety of our crew, we decided to postpone mist netting until 2021. We were able to successfully complete our 20 acoustic GRTS (NaBat survey […]

Field Season 2020 Recap and Updates

13 October 2020 in Uncategorized by Tara H

Last week we sent out letters to landowners with the results of our 2018 acoustic surveys. It is a lot of work to put these together, but we want to make sure that our volunteer landowners know that we appreciate their participation in this program! If you do not receive […]

Ready for the 2019 field season!

30 April 2019 in Uncategorized by Tara H

The Illinois Bat Conservation Program is officially back into the field season! We started getting out and collecting data in May but we haven’t had a chance to get the blog updated. Our graduate student Ash, and her assistants Brooke and Abby, have been working hard catching bats across the […]

2017 Field Season Kickoff!

15 June 2017 in Blog Posts by Tara H

In addition to mist netting and acoustic surveys of Illinois’ bats, the Illinois Bat Conservation Program is conducting roost surveys to better understand bat populations in Illinois. Bats utilize both day and night roosts and what they will use as their resting area ranges widely from single bats nestled into […]

Summer Bat Roost Emergence Counts

3 October 2016 in Blog Posts / Emergence Counts / Roost Evaluations by Tara H

We have recently completed netting at our second site, in the Embarras River Bottoms State Habitat Area near Lawrenceville, Illinois. After two nights of mist netting, we captured five bats of three different species – the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus), red bat (Lasiurus borealis), and tri-colored bat (Perimyotis subflavus). […]

Summer mist-netting on the lower Embarras River

26 August 2016 in Blog Posts / Mist Netting by Tara H