This year the IBCP field team had four sites that were surveyed with most of them being in central Illinois. We set out a total of 31 nets this year and caught a total of 67 bats and five different species of bats. In 2025 we caught 46 big brown […]
Mist Netting
It was a busy field season capturing bats in southern, central, and northern Illinois! We set out a total of 57 nets and caught a total of 96 bats with the most diversity being caught in southern Illinois. We caught seven different species of bats this year! We caught 42 […]
2024 Mist Netting Recap
We’ve had another exciting field season at IBCP! This year we focused our mist netting efforts in central and northern Illinois. We set out a total of 94 nets this year across four different sites and caught 62 bats! Our most exciting catch of the year was a Hoary bat! […]
2023 Mist Netting Recap
The beginning of September marked the end of the field season for the Illinois Bat Conservation Program (IBCP) as we finished work at our final, northern-most field site. As fall begins, Illinois bat species begin to prepare for winter migration and/or hibernation and their activity patterns, habitat use, and presence […]
End of Season Update
After field work in the north and central parts of Illinois, we recently spent two nights mist netting at Paul Wightman Subterranean Nature Preserve, in southwestern Illinois (Monroe County). A patchwork of forest fragments, restored prairie, and ponds, this property is also the site of the IBCP’s first capture of […]
Indiana bats at Paul Wightman Subterranean Nature Preserve
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
The IBCP has finished work at our first mist-netting site, in the southern portion of Kickapoo State Park (Vermilion County, Illinois). Mist-netting is a term used for the method of capturing bats using a large net made up of very fine threads. These nets have to be extremely inconspicuous because […]