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 eastern red bats (LABO), 14 big brown bats (EPFU), 13 little brown bats (MYLU), 12 evening bats (NYHU), 8 Indiana bats (MYSO), 4 southeastern bats (MYAU), and 3 tricolored bats (PESU)!
We had a number of bycatch and visitors at our field sites this year. Bycatch is a term used to describe animals that have been caught but are not the target species and is commonly used in fishing terms. We had a higher number of treefrogs in our nets than any other previous year and we caught the lowest number of flying squirrels (bottom left photo) this year. We also had a surprise capture of an Indigo Bunting (upper right photo). All bycatch were safely removed from the nets and released close to where they were caught. We encountered gar (bottom center photo) and armadillos (top left photo) in southern Illinois while we were netting too!
A big thank you to our 2024 field crew and our hard-working technicians Sydney Larson and Lauren Hahn. Also, a big thank you to the IDNR staff for their support this year. If you are interested in learning more about our program or bats in Illinois, don’t miss the Central Illinois Bat Festival on September 6th located at Anita Purves Nature Center in Urbana, IL! More details can be found on our upcoming events page. Hope to see you there!