Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a soon-to-be high school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Rachael has been writing the Baturday News for three years. Hi everybody! I hope you all had a good week! I saw a picture of some new bats on the Save Lucy Facebook page and thought I would write about them because they are a new species for me. When I first saw the picture, I thought they looked kind of like big brown bats, but they are evening bats! Their names are Wiggles and Shroom! Little Wiggles is missing some hair because he was sick and got some organic matter stuck in his fur. I hope he feels better soon. Little Shroom got her name from a very interesting characteristic of evening bats. They smell like mushrooms!!! Now, you might not know this about me, but mushrooms are not my favorite food. That said, I think I’d like to meet a little bat that smelled like one. Little Shroom is very cute, after all. Evening bats are not well known and look a lot like big brown bats. They are smaller though and have shorter hair. Big brown bats have long wavy hair and little evening bats look like they have buzz cuts. Evening bats are very social and live in large colonies. They are found in the southern United States from central Virginia to the south. Some of them have been found in Pennsylvania though. They live in the forest and in open areas like river corridors and wetlands. They migrate south for the winter. The best news of all is that they are not found in […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a soon-to-be high school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Rachael has been writing the Baturday News for three years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! I am having a lot of fun on Summer Vacation! I love getting to sleep in! I found a really cool article about bats in Georgia. A scientist from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources has been doing surveys of bat populations at the Ocmulgee National Monument for two years. Although WNS has been in Georgia since 2013, it is not in the middle part of the state. Scientists are hoping that bats from the north and south will be able to find safety from WNS in the middle. One thing that I thought was really interesting how the scientists figure out how old the bats are. They shine a light through the wings of the bat and see the opacity of the joints. Another thing that I liked about the article was how the scientist describes bats. She says they look “like the mixture of little tiny bear cubs and puppies with wings.” I never thought of little bats that way, but I think she’s right. You can read the article here. In other exciting news, there is a bat art contest going on! I’m sure some of you already saw the post on Save Lucy’s Facebook page, but just in case you missed it, here is the link to the article explaining the contest. The winner gets an art supplies! They give instructions on how to draw an adorable bat. I think I might have to try […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a soon-to-be high school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Rachael has been writing the Baturday News for three years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! I would like to apologize to all the shark lovers out there. It seems that my previous post comparing bats to sharks might have cast sharks in a not so glamorous light. I completely agree that sharks are amazing animals. I just happen to believe that bats are more amazing. However, considering the fact that I was a little unkind to the oversized fishies, I feel it is important to share one more shark fact with you before I discuss bats. So, without further ado… Apparently, the annual number of worldwide shark bites is 10 times less than the number of people bitten by other people in New York. (official source unknown – my sister told me J) So, while I have not been able to completely verify this information, perhaps sharks aren’t the bad guys they are believed to be. People from New York might want to consider not biting each other though. It makes them look, um, well, like a not so glamorous fishy. Just kidding! And, now for the bats…I was reading one of the bat magazines that I got from Bat Conservation International and there was an article about the history of bats in Japan. Historically, bats have been very popular in Japan and were believed to bring good luck. Pictures of bats often decorated pottery, sword kilts and kimonos. The article talked about how recently bats have been ignored. It also talked about how […]
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a soon-to-be high school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Rachael has been writing the Baturday News for three years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a nice week. I have some very sad news. Little Harold the adorable tri-colored bat pup that I met last week passed away. No one really knows what happened. He was eating well and seemed healthy, but still, he didn’t make it. I guess that sometimes little bats are so tiny when they are separated from their mothers that there isn’t much a human can do. I am very sad because he was a wonderful little pup. I was going to teach him to write poetry. Everyone at Save Lucy is very sad. The other little pups I met seem to be doing well. Who knows, maybe one of them will prove to be poetic before they are released. In different news, the very nice woman from Bat Conservation International who I met last week gave me some magazines to read. One of the magazines had a short article that I thought had some good news worth sharing. Apparently a man named Ralph Arwood found a new roost of rare Florida bonneted bats in Big Cypress National Preserve! You can read about it and see a very pretty picture of a bonneted bat here. Thank you Mrs. Jemison for my magazines and all the other fun stuff you gave me! I hope you all have a nice week.
Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a soon-to-be high school student and Save Lucy volunteer. Rachael’s interest in bats was sparked by the big brown bats that used the outside of her former home for a winter roost. Rachael has been writing the Baturday News for three years. Harold the tri-colored bat pup with m&ms for comparison. He weighs just over 2 grams. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. Personally, I enjoyed my first week of summer vacation by sleeping late. I am having a great time now because I am blogging live from Save Lucy headquarters. That’s right, I am visiting my furry friends. I haven’t seen them since they moved from Fairfax County a couple of months ago, so this is awesome! They are all doing well and there are even some new little friends for me to see. Yep, it’s still baby season! I got to meet 3 little baby bats! Two of them are little red bat pups. They are adorable little siblings who obviously love each other very much. They were hugging each other in their little bat habitat. I got to watch them drink their milk. They seemed very happy with their meal. After I met the little red bats, I got to meet the teeniest, tiniest little bat that I have ever seen! Little Harold is a very tiny tri-colored bat. He has baby fur that looks like velvet and the cutest little toes you’ll ever see. He has big ears and little black eyes. And he is tiny! His body is about the size of an M&M! He is a cute M&M with wings!!! Of course, he got a yummy milk meal as well. He enjoyed it so much that he got some milk […]