Kathy Gum, age 14, of Hinton, W. Va. , for her question:
Do bats migrate?
Bats are night time creatures, which means that it is not easy to see and observe them. Until recently, they have been rather mysterious animals, What's more, there are several hundred different bats in the world, each kind with its own habits. It is not surprising then, that we do not yet know everything about all the mysterious bats.
Not so long ago naturalists thought that all bats in northern climates hibernated through the coldest months. Now we know that, while some bats do hibernate through the worst of the winter, others migrate to the southern and warmer regions of their range. The most common bats in North America are the little brown bat and the red bat. One of them hibernates in the north and the other flies south with the birds.
The little brown bat is a mousy little fellow who tips the scales at half an ounce and measures three and a half inches in length. H e spends the day snoozing in a dark cave, in a hollow tree or maybe even in an old attic. At dusk he comes out for his dinner, swooping through the air with his mouth wide open. He is trawling for insects and is most happy when he can fly through a cloud of mosquitoes. He gets a mouthful with every swoop.
In midsummer, many female brown bats meet in, perhaps, a dark cave. All male bats are driven away. Then each little lady bat gives birth to one bare, blind, helpless baby. Since he is a mammal, the pink baby is fed on mother's milk. He has no nest and, when she goes hunting, he is left hanging from a ledge by his feet. In about three weeks, Junior is strong enough to go hunting for himself.
In late fall, the little brown bats prepare for winter. They eat extra food to take on a layer of fat. Before snow falls they each find a cosy roost to spend the winter. It may be a cave, a hollow tree or a hay loft. Here the little brown bat hibernates until spring.
The red bat is common from southern and central Canada all the way south to Florida. When a cave or loft is handy, the red bat will take shelter for his daytime snooze, but he is just as contented to sleep in a leafy tree. Because of his habit of hanging upside down among the leafy twigs, this pretty creature has been called the tree bat. The babies, one to four of them, cling to the fur on Mammals chest and go with her when she goes hunting for insects.
In the northern range both the red bat and the little brown bat are unable to cope with the winter. The red bat, however, does not hibernate. Come fall, flocks of these pretty creatures migrate on leathery wings to the southern part of their range.