[2] It is found in Mexico, Central America, Trinidad, and every mainland South American country except Chile and Uruguay.

Adults have blue-black head and upperparts with grayish edges on the feathers from the upper back to the uppertail coverts.

Their cere and bare skin around the eye are bright yellow, their iris black-brown, and their legs and feet orange-yellow.

However, the records in Texas, at high elevation in Bolivia, on Tobago, and on islands off the Yucatán Peninsula, Honduras, and Panama show a pattern of wandering.

[6] Bat falcons perch conspicuously on high, open snags, from which they launch aerial attacks on their prey.

Their diet is eclectic; they hunt bats, birds (such as swifts, swallows, hummingbirds, parakeets, tanagers and small water birds), small rodents, snakes, lizards, frogs, and large insects such as dragonflies, butterflies, moths, grasshoppers, true bugs, beetles, and hymenopterans.

Eggs have been noted in March in Venezuela, in April in Guyana, and in August near Manaus, Brazil.

The bat falcon is vocal "in breeding season, especially near nest, in contacts with other raptors, and even when attacking prey."

Its main call is a "rapid shrill screaming" kee-kee-kee.. or kew-kew-kew..; the male's is higher pitched than the female's.

It has an extremely large range and an estimated population of at least a half million mature individuals, though the latter is believed to be decreasing.

[1] It is "[w]idespread and generally not uncommon in appropriate habitat, it being one of the most widely distributed New World falcons."