ISU’s Center for North American Bat Research and Conservation hosts an annual Bat Festival. An art competition is part of the festival. Visit the images here . First place is totally awesome! And remember, you can upload your own artwork right here to the I Care Project. Feel like drawing bats? Visit the art contest above for inspiration. Or send your videos, poems, essays, random thoughts to saveLucy[at]saveLucytheBat.org
We made some changes to make the navigation easier. The blog can now be accessed through the left hand menu on the home page and we added some submenus for informaiton about Lucy and about being bat friendly. We also added a Bats in the News section to keep you up to date on all the cool stuff being reported about bats. Please check out the changes and let us know if anything isn’t working as it should. Click me!
If you have recently registered for the Save Lucy club, and find you have been deleted, please e-mail us (contact info can be found on the home page). We are getting lots of suspicious sign ups and we are deleting them as soon as we see them, but we may have deleted ‘real’ people by mistake. Please let us know if you have any trouble using the site. Thank you Lucy’s people
Check out California Bat friends Cindy Myers and Project Wildlife on KUSI news in San Diego. Especially check out the amazingly adorable Western Pipistrelle in the photos. Also, check out Leslie & Sherry of Save Lucy on Voice of America here. Be sure to watch the video to see Mooch the big brown, Shaggy the red bat, and the orphan tri-colored bats, Titan and Monkey.
Come see us at Bat Fest Arlington. We’re celebrating the Year of the Bat with this signature event on August 27 at Gulf Branch Nature Center. See live bats, play bat games, take a bat hike and make bat crafts. Go here for more information!
Our friend Vicki Beckham-Smith contributed to a fantastic Georgia Outdoors segment on bats. . Learn more about Vicki and her bats on her website. Another great friend to bats, Corky Quirk, looks out for bats in Northern California through NorCal Bats. Her local public television station did a terrific special about a huge colony of bats Corky keeps tabs on. Watch it! A note from Lucy’s people…there is a lot of chatter about public radio and television, and some people have been very vocal about calling for cuts to government funding for public media. But some of the best and most accurate nature news and programming comes from public radio and television. Public media does not focus only on celebrities, sensationalism, or ‘big’ stories. Without public media, bats and local personalities would rarely get any media coverage at all. Please support your local public radio and television stations. The bats need them!
The Washington Post recently featured the Save Lucy Campaign’s president, Leslie Sturges. Check it out here
The UNEP Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and The Agreement on the Conservation of Populations of European Bats (EUROBATS) have joined together to celebrate the Year of the Bat. We are joining our friends at Bat Conservation International to become a Year of the Bat partner. Please visit BCI’s Year of the Bat page to help celebrate bats all over the world! Special YOTB events are planned for August 27, 2011 and Save Lucy is proud to announce that Bat Fest Arlington will be a YOTB dedicated event. Please come see us at Gulf Branch Nature Center in Arlington, Virginia to celebrate our native North American bats. Saturday, August 27 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM Gulf Branch Nature Center, 3608 Military Rd., Arlington, VA 22207 703-228-3403 Enjoy a thoroughly batty evening and add to your knowledge of local night life. See a presentation with live bats, go on a walk to see bats flying and to hear their echolocation calls, and learn about foods that are pollinated by bats. We’ll also have games, bat crafts, and lots of info on our local furry bug zappers. Children under 14 must register with an accompanying adult. $10 fee per adult, $7 fee under age 12, babies in backpacks are free. Register for one of the three bat talks below. All other activities ongoing. 6:30 – 7 PM – For families with young children (under 5) – Program #642851-L 7:15 – 8 PM – Program #642851-M 8:15 – 9 PM – Program #642851-N
It’s been a long time since we updated Lucy’s blog, and we apologize. Spring and summer are very busy times for some bat people, especially bat rehabilitators. In the mid-Atlantic, where Save Lucy headquarters is located, bats start pupping (having babies) in late May and through June. Unfortuntately, baby bats sometimes fall from the colony, or the entire colony is disturbed by a predator, which causes pups to fall. Usually mother bats rescue their pups after dark, but if something has happened to the mother or the colony abandons a roost site, pups become orphaned. Caring people who find orphan bats bring them to bat rehabilitators, who care for the orphans until they’re old enough to be released to the wild. Please enjoy this picture of a rescued eastern red bat in Oklahoma. Our friend, Carol Bunyard, sent the picture. She is taking care of ‘Junior’s’ mother and is helping the mother remain strong enough to raise Junior.
According to the US Geological Service “Pest-control services provided by insect-eating bats in the United States likely save the U.S. agricultural industry at least $3 billion a year, and yet insectivorous bats are among the most overlooked economically important, non-domesticated animals in North America…” Read the full press release here