Five Facts About Gotham's Bats

Flying bats

The evenings are growing darker and the nights are getting longer. With Halloween just days away, there's no better time to learn a few facts about the bats of New York City.

Kaitlyn Parkins is the associate director of conservation and science with New York City Audubon and an expert on local bats.

 

BAT FACT ONE: Six different species of bats can be found in NYC.

Parkins says all of them are named after their color.

“We have eastern red, silver haired, and hoary bats, which are all tree-roosting bats. And then we have big brown, tricolored, and little brown bats, which are cave-roosting bats."

And all are quite small:

"A little brown bat weighs only 0.29 ounces, so just a couple of grams. And even our biggest bat—the hoary bat—weighs less than an ounce."

New York City: five boroughs, six bats.

 

BAT FACT TWO: All six species of bats found in New York City eat only ONE thing.

Parkins says, be glad for that.

"All of the bats in New York City are insectivores, which means that they eat insects, and insects only. Insects like mosquitoes and moths and other pests. Bats in the U.S. actually save farmers billions of dollars and pest control services every year. So we want our bats around, so that they can eat all of those pesky mosquitoes and other bugs that bother us in the summer."

 

BAT FACT THREE: Some New York City bats roost in trees. IN TREES.

Parkins says we might have a mental image of bats as living in barns or caves or under the eaves—and some do! But not the one most common in these parts. The Eastern red bat is a tree bat, and spends its time hanging upside down from branches like a little dark leaf.

“Most people will walk right by many of them on street trees in their lifetimes," Parkins said, "and never know that they're walking past a bat "

Nothing to see here, just a little dead leaf, hanging from this spooky tree.

 

BAT FACT FOUR: Some bats hibernate, some bats migrate.

Parkins says some species, like the little brown bat and the big brown bat and tricolored bat, will head out of the city once the weather turns too cold.

“They will find caves and they will roost in those caves over the winter. Other species — the eastern red and silver haired and the hoary bat — are migratory bats, so you think of them as migrating the same way birds might migrate. (They) migrate south and we're at the very top edge of the winter range,” she said. “Some of these bats actually spend their winters in New York City in leaf piles or under the bark of trees. And on warm days in the winter, when the insects are out, you might actually see these bats out foraging in the frigid cold of January and February."

Yeah, they hang out in leaf piles. Romp with caution.

 

BAT FACT FIVE: New York City's bats are incredibly noisy. We just can't hear them.

Parkins makes that sound like a good thing.

"The bats of New York City echolocate from 20 to 80 kilohertz. Humans, we can only really hear up to a maximum of 20 kilohertz. And they are also some of the loudest animals in the world. They emit sounds over 100 decibels, which is essentially the equivalent of a rock concert or a jet engine. But because they are echolocating at such a high frequency that we can't hear, we don't hear them screaming into the night to find their insect prey."

If you want to learn even MORE about the secret lives of urban bats, Kaitlyn Parkins is leading a talk on the bats of Gotham at Green-Wood Cemetery, Thursday evening at 6, via zoom. It costs $5 dollars and is open to the public.