Atlas der Säugetiere Nordrhein-Westfalens

Große Hufeisennase

4 entries

Greater horseshoe bat

Rote Liste NRW: 1 Vom Aussterben bedroht

  entry

Rhinolophus ferrumequinum

The Greater Horseshoe Bat belongs to the large native bat species. At rest these bats hang in the open. Their characteristic noseleaf can then be seen easily because Greater Horseshoe Bats rarely wrap themselves completely in their wings. Habitats of this species are diversely structured and climatically favoured regions with a good availability of insects. Greater Horseshoe bats prefer to hunt in flycatcher-like fashion from a perch. While they have their summer roosts in spacious attics, they migrate to caves and mine tunnels in winter, but during this season they may also switch roosts.

Distribution of this species in Germany has always been limited to the climatically milder regions in Central and Southern Germany. However, today it has disappeared in Germany except for a few island-like occurrences in the border area to Luxembourg, probably for the same reasons that are responsible for the decline of other bat species.

From the 20th century, there are no verified records of the Greater Horseshoe bat in the area of the modern North Rhine-Westphalia, except for records in the area of Bonn and Königswinter. It is thus surprising that there are recent records of single individuals from hibernacula in the Eifel and Sauerland regions.

Author

Henning Vierhaus

Citation

Vierhaus H (2025): Große_Hufeisennase (Rhinolophus_ferrumequinum).In: AG Säugetierkunde NRW — Online-Atlas of the mammals of North Rhine-Westphalia. Downloaded from saeugeratlas-nrw.lwl.org on 2025/04/26