Atlas der Säugetiere Nordrhein-Westfalens

Nordfledermaus

407 entries

Northern bat

Rote Liste NRW: 1 Vom Aussterben bedroht

  entry

Eptesicus nilssonii

This most cold-resistant of our indigenous bat species in the north of Europe even occur beyond the polar circle. As an adult it stands out because of its golden coloured hair tips of the otherwise dark-brown back and head pelage. In addition, its underside is coloured light yellowish-brown and displays a clear colour contrast especially on the sides of the throat. The ears and the tragus are relatively short. With an average head-body length of about 5 cm, they belong to the intermediate-sized indigenous bats.
As a typical bat of the middle and high mountains, the species hunts in structurally rich, open, mostly coniferous forest-dominated elevations preferably over water bodies for dipterans, moths, hymenopterans and true bugs. As a rule, summer roosts are located in crevice-rich building facades with climatically favoured conditions of nearby villages and towns. Suitable hibernacula predominantly cool tunnels and mines are being visited for swarming relatively early in the summer towards the end of July. There are known cases, for example from Thuringia and Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, where hibernating Northern Bats were discovered in the gaps system of talus slopes.
As one of the greatest rarities of the North Rhine-Westphalian bat fauna, it has been recorded with the bat detector, mostly by Rheinald Skiba, in the Rothaar Mountains and its northern extensions. Beyond this, currently only a handful of hibernacula, a swarming roosts near Winterberg and a nursery roost near Meschede have become known for this comparatively hard to verify species.

Author

Michael Frede

Citation

Frede M (2025): Nordfledermaus (Eptesicus_nilssonii).In: AG Säugetierkunde NRW — Online-Atlas of the mammals of North Rhine-Westphalia. Downloaded from saeugeratlas-nrw.lwl.org on 2025/04/01