Eastern Red Bat | Austin Bat Refuge

Lasiurus borealis

Eastern red bats are wild spirits of the woods! The best kept secret out there is that these incredible beings are living in our own back yards and hardly anyone even knows they’re there. A red bat hiding in plain sight in a green tree seems like it would be grackle bait, but they are amazingly hard to find; indeed many birders spend much of their lives looking in trees and have never seen one.

This is a bat with a wild intelligence and a playful personality; they’re fun loving little trouble-makers and a joy to get to know.

Here’s a red bat family with orphan Michele wanting to be adopted:

Here’s the same mum (second from the right) with her four boys (nice save Laurie Dreesen!), still hanging together as a family even though they have been weaned.

Here’s at red bat male spending the day as a bat bud, waiting for night to fall to bloom into an insect hunting machine!

They use their tail as a blanket and a poncho, they get soaking wet and five minutes after the rain stops, they shake like a dog and are dry and fluffy again!