One of the joys of a warm winter’s day is finding an Eastern Red Bat hunting or perched on a tree. While Eastern Red Bats usually hunt at night, they will hunt during the day on a warm winter’s day.

Today, was such a day.  Erika Piik found one flying in the Maintenance Field which is in The Ramble around 78th Street west of the East Drive.  The bat would hunt insects for 30 minutes and then perch for a similar amount of time.  It perched once on a tree trunk and once on tree branch.  While flying it avoided being eaten by a Cooper’s Hawk, not once but twice! 

In addition to photographing the bat, I was able to get nice recordings.