Whether you’re interested in bats because you love them, or you’re worried they’re roosting in your attic, you might be wondering where do bats go during the day?
No matter your intentions (learn more about them or find them so you can have a professional relocate them), you likely know that bats are nocturnal, leaving you curious as to where you might find them during the day in hopes of getting a better look!
Thankfully, bats are creatures of habit, and once you find out where they’re roosting (which is not easy), you’ll be able to find them day after day.
Remember to be quiet, stay out of their way, and if they’ve taken up residence in your home, find an expert to help you safely move them without causing them harm or too much upset.
Where Do Bats Go During the Day?
Bats love to leave their roost and head out to hunt at night, but when dawn comes, they’ll go back to their nest, wherever that might be. Bats typically roost up high since they cannot fly from the ground. During the day, it’s likely you can find them hanging in caves, crevices, barns, silos, attics, and, for some species, in trees.
Tracking Bats in the Daylight
Many nature lovers and cave enthusiasts also take an interest in bats. You can’t really explore either location without possibly coming into contact with them, so it’s good to know where and when you might find them during your daytime travels.
Also, those of you who have seen a bat in your home or another building on your property may also be concerned about where they’re roosting, so you can locate and move them.
No matter the situation, if you need to track down a group of bats, doing so during the daylight hours is your best bet.
It might take a little bit of work to find the roost, but if you pay close attention to high spaces and the amount of guano (bat poop) around the entrances to those high spaces, you’re more likely to find the roost.
Remember, bats can congregate in pretty large groups, so take care not to startle them, or you might have a disastrous flying mass of daytime bats on your hands.
Nobody wants that, trust me.
Work with a Professional
Finding bats, in general, is quite complicated, especially if you’re unsure where to look. If you think they’re in a barn on your property, it’s easier to find them rather than searching through caves in the woods.
Though exterminators do know how to find and eliminate bats, it’s best to work with a wildlife conservation specialist to make sure the bats are relocated safely, if necessary.
To understand how bats live and where they go during the day, many studies have involved tracking them and documenting their behavior.
It’s through studies such as these that science has been able to determine where bats hang out, no pun intended, when they aren’t out hunting at night. Unless they’re in the process of migrating, bats like to stay in the same general area, roosting in the same spot every night with the same bats.
So, if you’ve seen bats around, you can almost guarantee that there’s a larger group nearby. Of course, science has come to know what it knows about bats through the use of high-tech GPS tracking devices.
Bats are notoriously tricky to track, and you might not have access to that type of technology that can follow them, but if you’re working in a small area, you can likely track a bat back to its roosting place.
Keeping Bats Away
Though bats are incredibly beneficial to have around, many people aren’t fond of them. If you think you’ve got bats roosting somewhere around your home, plenty of bright light will keep them away and ask them to move on gently.
Try floodlights or spotlights in your backyard. Of course, this will attract more bugs that the bats would otherwise hunt and eat, but we can’t always have the best of both worlds!
Frequently Asked Questions about Where Bats Go During the Day
Do bats only hunt at night?
Healthy bats hunt only at night, and you’ll never see them during the day unless the roost is disturbed or they’re sick. If you do see a bat during the daytime, contact animal control professionals right away, as this behavior is not normal.
Do bats stay together?
Research shows that bats typically stay in the same group to roost and migrate. They will hunt independently at night, but they find each other again at dawn to sleep and rest the day away.
Can bats sleep on the ground?
You will rarely find a bat on the ground, and if you do, it’s probably injured, not sleeping. Bats sleep in high places during the day, roosting in caves and crevices across the globe.
Understanding Where Bats Go During the Day
Bats hunt using sound, so their senses must be as undisturbed as possible. Nighttime is the perfect time for them to pursue dinner, as human activity is relatively low.
Bats will spend the day in their roost, waiting up high for the night to fall.