Category Baturday News

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a high school student, bat advocate, 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 over three years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. While things here have been wintery (although not too bad in the DC area), things in Australia have been horribly hot. It’s summer down there now and they have been having a terrible heat wave. It has caused “bushfires,” which are like forest fires, but they are in the Australian bush land. The heat has also caused a lot of problems for the bats. Australia has beautiful bats called flying foxes. Compared to our bats, these bats are huge! They mostly eat fruit, but they also feed on pollen and flowers. These bats don’t rely on echolocation to find their food. They make calling sounds that humans can hear. I have been told that flying fox colonies can be very loud. It must be an amazing thing to see and hear! Because of the Australian heat wave, thousands of flying foxes have died in Australia. Many of these bats were nursing mothers. Bat rescue organizations have been desperately working to save these babies. One organization runs an amazing Youtube channel for Batzilla the Bat. Here, you can see a lot of videos of the absolutely adorable flying fox pups that they are saving. Batzilla’s people are very nice and they have allowed me to share this video with you.  It is of a little black flying fox pup and is quite possibly the most adorable thing you will see today. It must be very difficult and depressing […]

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a high school student, bat advocate, 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 over three years. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week. I did not. I WAS ROBBED!!! I was promised snow. Ok, it wasn’t going to be a lot of snow, but I live in Fairfax County. If it had just snowed a little teeny tiny bit before 5:00-ish in the morning, I could have had a delayed school opening. But, it did not. No, it waited until everyone was safely in school before it started snowing. By the time it was all done, we had a whole ½ inch on the grass. Is that enough to cancel school for the rest of the month??? No, it is not! And, to make things worse, the people who live just a little bit north of me got tons and tons of snow. I am a little jealous. And I feel a little lied to by a pesky rodent, too. Ok, I got that off my chest. I feel a little better now, thank you. And now, for the good news. As most of you know, bat populations have been declining due to many reasons, including environmental changes, habitat destruction, wind turbines, and for us here in North America, White Nose Syndrome. But, bats in Europe are making a comeback! All bats are protected in Europe and European governments have joined together to try to save the bats. A study of 16 of the 45 bat species in nine countries in Europe shows that many of the bat populations increased […]

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a high school student, bat advocate, 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 over three years. Hi everyone! I hope you’ve had a good week. Little Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow a few days ago, so we’re supposed to get 6 more weeks of winter. I don’t know about you, but I could use just one week of winter. We really haven’t had much of a winter here in the DC area. We haven’t had a single snow day!!! We had a little bit of snow Monday morning that caused a 2 hour delay, but we still had to go to school. I sure do hope we get some snow during these next 6 weeks! THERE IS STILL HOPE!!! I have some very exciting news! Some of you may have already seen this on Facebook, but for those of you who haven’t, Save Lucy has another freetail bat! That’s right, little Freda is no longer alone! Little Federico is the first freetail to be found in the Washington metro area. He was rescued almost two weeks ago from a building near Dyke Marsh. The poor little guy is acting like he has a head trauma. He has a badly bruised forehead and ears. He is getting a little better every day, but he still acts like he has a headache. He isn’t echolocating much, maybe because he head hurts so much, so Freda isn’t paying attention to him. Hopefully he’ll start feeling better soon and will start “talking.” I think it would be nice for him and Freda to be able to talk […]

Baturday News is a weekly blog written by Rachael, a high school student, bat advocate, 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 over three years. I would like to dedicate this week’s blog to Mary Tyler Moore. She was a very funny actress who passed away this week. She entertained people for over 60 years with shows like the Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Dick Van Dyke Show. I have watched a few of her shows from the 70’s and she was absolutely hysterical. My thoughts are with her family. Hi everyone! I hope you all had a good week! I had a very busy one at school and I’m glad it’s the weekend. This weekend is a special one for a lot of special athletes here in VA. The Special Olympics of VA Bowling Tournament is this weekend! Athletes from all over the state are coming up to Northern VA to bowl! I would like to wish all my buddies an absolutely fantastic time! I am looking forward to cheering you on!It’s going to be a lot of fun. And now for the bat news…I found an article about endangered Indiana bats. Indiana bat populations have declined because of White Nose Syndrome, but these bats are also dying because of wind turbines. A study published by the US Geological Survey stated that the bats might not be able to recover. The researchers looked at the number of bat mortalities caused by wind turbines and those caused by WNS. As everyone already knows, WNS has killed millions of bats. It is the largest threat to Indiana bat populations. But, wind turbines […]