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 had a good week. I enjoyed my last week of summer vacation by sleeping late and shopping. I will be starting high school next week. While I’m excited about being in high school, I am going to miss sleeping until noon (sometimes even later!). I was talking to a family friend a little while ago and he was telling me about his trip to Bracken Cave in Texas. He and another friend are photographers for the Nature Conservancy. They went to Bracken Cave last year to take pictures and video of the bats for a Nature Conservancy article. He took the video and our other friend took the photographs. I wish I could have been there! It must have been amazing! He told me all about sitting outside the cave waiting for the bats to come out for the night. He said that when the bats all start flying out of the cave, there are so many of them that you can feel the wind caused by their wings. He watched for hours while between 15 and 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats flew out of the cave. The Nature Conservancy article tells about how a development company wanted to build a neighborhood close to the cave, so the Nature Conservancy and Bat Conservation International worked to save the cave. Luckily they were successful, so the bats are now safe. If you want to read the article, you can read it here. Another article is […]
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! While I was enjoying my summer here in Virginia, people in other places around the world weren’t enjoying themselves quite so much. It has be a particularly difficult week for the Italians. There was a terrible earthquake in Italy this week. They are still having aftershocks, which in my opinion are strong enough to be considered full-fledged earthquakes themselves. I would like to dedicate this week’s blog to the people of Italy. Our thoughts are with you. Here is an adorable picture of an Italian bat, the Mediterranean Horseshoe Bat. Now, for happier news. It is International Bat Weekend! All the bats at Save Lucy are very excited. They just know that they will get extra mealworms for the special occasion! Arlington, VA is celebrating Bat Weekend with Bat Fest Arlington. Mrs. Sturges, Save Lucy’s president, will be there, but unfortunately, I can’t go. I will be at Bat Fest Annandale in a couple of weeks though. I am looking forward to seeing all the bats and bat lovers there! In other news, there was a very important article shared this week on Save Lucy’s Facebook page. I feel it is my civic duty to mention it here, just in case some of you didn’t see it. I can’t believe I have to mention it, but…don’t lick bats! Apparently, some people do this for fun. It is not a good idea. I believe this rule should be extended to […]
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. Since this was the last week of the Olympics, I thought it would be nice to do another Olympic bat post. These Olympic Games were special because we had a team made up of refugee athletes. These athletes come from countries where it is no longer safe for them to live because of wars. Today, we are going to learn about bats from their homelands. Two of the athletes are from Syria. One of the bats of Syria is the Hemprich’s long-eared bat. I think this bat’s long ears are especially cute. The bat has thick, soft fur that is sandy-yellow to dark brown with a white belly. Its nostrils are crescent shaped. This handsome little bat is carnivorous and likes to eat beetles, termites, cockroaches, grasshoppers, crickets and locusts. If you would like to learn more about the Hemprich’s long-eared bat, you can read about it here. Five of the athletes are from the country of South Sudan. This is the youngest country in the world and I think it’s really sad that it’s already having a civil war. When the country was only 2 months old, I met a few people from South Sudan. They were a delegation that came to see our Special Olympics and it was a lot of fun to talk with them about their new country. Now I wonder how they are doing. Not only is South Sudan the world’s youngest country, it […]
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 had a great week. I have been enjoying watching the Olympics. The US is doing very well and we are all very proud of our athletes. The athletes from Maryland (not too far from my home in Virginia) are doing especially well. As promised, we’ll celebrate the Olympics by learning about bats from countries around the world. I thought it would be nice to research bats from two countries that won their very first Olympic medals ever in Rio: Fiji and Kosovo. Fiji only has one bat that is endemic to the country. It is called the Fijian Monkey-faced bat. Not only is this the only bat in Fiji, it is the only mammal endemic to the country, too! The Fijian monkey-faced bat is a large megabat and has orange eyes. It has thick fur and weighs up to 350 grams. Not many of these bats have been found. They only live within a 100 square kilometer region of the rainforest on the mountain of Taveuni. Because of this, it is listed as critically endangered. Scientists believe there are fewer than 1,000 Fijian Monkey-faced bats. If you want to read more about this bat, you can find some information here and here. There are a few bats that are native to Kosovo. One of them is the Natterer’s bat. The Natterer’s bat lives throughout Europe and is not considered to be endangered. It is a medium sized bat with gray-brown fur on its back and […]
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 very excited that the Olympic Games have begun in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Our little friend, Freda, is very happy about it too. Since she is a Brazilian Free-Tailed Bat, she is looking forward to learning more about Brazil. I thought it would be nice to research Brazilian bats and I found a very interesting one. The Greater Bulldog Bat is an amazing bat that lives in Brazil as well as the rest of South and Central America. These bats are absolutely adorable! Greater Bulldog Bats are one of the few bats that eat fish. They use echolocation to detect ripples in the water. They stick their feet in the water and catch the fish with their talons. They are able to catch over 30 fish in a single fishing trip! Because they eat fish, these bats live near rivers and streams in the rainforests. If you’d like to read more about these bats, you can read it here. Here’s some great film of a greater bulldog bat fishing. Please forgive NatGeo Wild for the alarming title! Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll learn more about interesting bats from around the world. I hope everyone enjoys watching the Olympic Games. My hope is that these games will encourage all the people of the world to learn a little more about other countries and cultures. Let’s hope these games are able to encourage peace and understanding around […]
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 […]
