New Hampshire’s two most common bat species, the little brown bat and the big brown bat, use buildings as their summer roosts. Abandoned houses, barns, church steeples – and even currently-occupied structures – can provide a summer home to female bats and their young. Monitoring these “maternity colonies” can give biologists a good idea of how bat populations are doing from year to year. With the occurrence of White Nose Syndrome in New Hampshire, monitoring these colonies is more important than ever.

The NH Bat Counts project involves citizen science volunteers in helping to monitor summer bat colonies in New Hampshire. Bat counts take about an hour and a half in an evening, starting a half hour before dusk, and volunteers are asked to conduct at least one count in June and one count in July. For more information about the Summer Bat Colony Counts, please contact Haley Andreozzi at haley.andreozzi@unh.edu or visit NH Fish & Game's website:

NH Bat Count Website

Sign up to receive updates from NH Fish & Game and UNH Extension about the upcoming bat counting season, information on training opportunities, and results from summer bat counts. 

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