Halloween Fundraising for BCT is spooktacularly easy!

 

Lisbeth and colleagues celebrating Halloween

BCT member, senior ecologist and returning Halloween fundraiser - Lisbeth Nash, tells us how and why she chooses to have fun and raise much needed funds for the Bat Conservation Trust at Halloween.

 

 

Fundraising for the Bat Conservation Trust is great fun and super easy.  For the last two years here at my office at AECOM Cardiff,  I have hijacked Halloween to promote bats, their conservation and to raise money for BCT. Whilst, having fun with my colleagues.

Check out these Halloween 'treats'

Since 2011 we have held a Halloween cake sale and spooky bat quiz. Cakes are kindly donated by the office's 'Mary Berry's and Jamie Oliver's' and all we ask is that people donate a couple of shiny  doubloons, for a slice of cake, trick or treat sweets and entry to a batty quiz.

Two weeks before the big day I put up some of the BCT template fundraising posters - these are available to download free from the BCT Halloween pages. On the day I then adorn the office with Halloween decorations, BCT logos and bat fact posters .

When I first started fundraising for bats most people in our office hadn't  heard of BCT. But this year, without prompt, I have been ask to run the event again - it seems to be a firm "October" favourite. The event has even spread across the River Severn to our Bristol office!

Lisbeth uses Halloween to raising funds for BCT alongside dispelling bat myths

By sneaking a few bat facts and myth busters into the Halloween quiz hopefully the positive message for bat conservation is getting out there. It's great to see our engineers and consultants, some usually not enamoured with bats, get really concerned and competitive over whether there are 18 or 17 resident species of bat in the UK, if the bumblebee bat really is the smallest bat in the world or just a hoax name and if they can name three UK bat species - Battius Battus does not count! 

This Halloween why not see if you can dosomething similar or even more bat- tastic for bat conservation at  your office!

Lisbeth Nash
Senior Ecologist AECOM

Why not go batty for bats this Halloween and do some fundraising of your own - Simply visit www.bats.org.uk/halloween or email fundraise@bats.org.uk for information and advice.

It's Just Not Summer Without Bats

BCT's Heather McFarlane laments the bad weather and praises the volunteers and staff who are trying to make sure that despite the clouds there is a silver lining for bats.

2012 is no ordinary year and as far as the weather goes it seems pretty strange. We had a heat wave in March, a drought in the South East, floods in Wales and Northern England and the wettest April and June on record. While this wet and windy weather has been interrupting Wimbledon, dampening national celebrations and washing out back garden barbeques, what I have missed most of all is our bats. I haven’t really seen any and it just doesn’t feel like summer without those fast moving shadows darting across the skies as sunset.

Bat Above my Garden, by Richard Carter. Licensed through Creative Commons.

I am not the only one to notice that it has been a somewhat bat-less summer. Recently I was in Birmingham promoting bat-friendly gardening and hundreds of people told me they hadn’t seen their bats this year either.

Could it be the weather?

I was asked what was behind the “bat-less summer” and in truth we just can’t say for sure. We know bats face long standing environmental pressures, and our bat populations are thought to have declined by 70% in the 20th Century. But recently here at BCT we have also seen unusual activity on our Bat Helpline. Just a few months ago the phones were ringing off the hook with reports of grounded bats. There was a 50% increase in calls in May about bats that had ended up on the ground unable to fly away. It looks like many bats emerged from hibernation only to for the inhospitable, cold, wet and windy weather to return.

Pipistrelle by Dave. Licensed through Creative Commons.

Being a bat is energy intensive. You are small, you have to fly to catch up to 3000 insects a night, and you face a nightly struggle to find roosts, safe commuting routes and hunting grounds. Poor weather means that there are fewer insects around for you to eat and makes hunting more difficult. If you don’t get enough food then, just like a human, you can become weak and get exhausted. When bats get too weak to fly, they can end up stuck on the ground, exposed and vulnerable.

Luckily, thanks to the work of Bat Helpline Officers, volunteer bat carers and concerned members of the public, many grounded bats can be saved. My colleagues give advice on how to safely move bats to safer places using gloves, tea towels and shoeboxes. They can help callers keep a bat in a safe container, with a bit of water in a bottle top for it to drink. In more serious cases a volunteer bat carer will often be needed. Trained in how to care for these tiny creatures bat carers can often rehabilitate bats before releasing them back into the wild.

Rescued Bat and Suckling Baby Bat by Steven Allen. Used with permission.

But by early July, the Bat Helpline phones should be ringing with different calls. By now, the Bat Helpline is usually busy with home owners reporting maternity roosts or people who’ve found a baby bat taking a wrong turn and ending up in the bathroom! But this year it looks like many maternity roosts have remained empty and abandoned with no mothers returning and no baby bats being born in there. Our first baby bat call arrived nearly a month late and we only had about 20 calls about baby bats by the end of June. These few babies will be in for a tough time because they only have a few weeks to feed up before autumn and hibernation. If the weather doesn’t improve for bats, bat mothers will have fewer nights to hunt, there will be fewer insects to catch and little time for the young bats to learn how to fly and hunt for themselves. We may well have some more exhausted bats later in the season.

But we don’t know yet if this summer’s weather is behind the reports of empty roosts and grounded bats, or whether it will have long lasting consequences for our bat populations. However, thanks to the National Bat Monitoring Programme volunteers we will find out. Volunteers are out scanning the skies and counting bats going in and coming out of roosts so that we can build up a picture of how bat populations are faring and what’s affecting them.

Hedgerow in Suffolk by Tom Need. Licensed through Creative Commons.

Like many people who haven’t seen bats this year, I feel like a part of summer is missing and I don’t know when it will come back. But in the meantime here at BCT we hope our bat walks aren’t washed out, and we continue to work for bat friendly practices in woodlands, cities and rural areas. We’re also grateful that volunteer bat groups and roost visitors all over the country are working tirelessly to ensure their patch is the best it can be for bats and that bat carers are on hand to help grounded and injured bats. And while it is not easy to sleep at night knowing the skies are empty outside my window, I know when summer does arrive we’ll have made Britain better for bats and for all of us too.

Do your bit for bats - support the Bat Helpline today!

Let us know on Twitter if you’ve donated: @_BCT_ or #BatlessSummer

Goths and Bats: A Match Made in . . . Whitby!

On the first day of Whitby Goth Weekend, our resident goth Jess Barker explores the affinity between goths and bats.

Since the birth of goth in the London Bat Cave club thirty years ago, goths and bats have tended to roost together. A quick google shows the mass of goth-targeted bat gear out there, from tights, jewellery, skirts and bags, to the more unusual bat carnival outfit and odd bat doll... thing...

Inexperienced young goths are called 'baby bats', elder goths are sometimes ‘batcavers’, and the most goth of all are said to poop bats! Both species frequent trees, and while only goths don their finery, some fruit bats do rather appear to be wearing leather trench coats. We’re also both somewhat misunderstood groups – far more friendly and fluffy than expected when you get to know us!

BCT volunteer Shirley Thompson discusses bats with goths at Whitby Goth Weekend in 2009

Then there’s the Whitby link. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was partially written in the North Yorkshire town – now home to the major biannual goth gathering, Whitby Gothic Weekend. Stoker found the name ‘Dracula’ in the town’s Public Library, and scenes in the book feature Drac first arriving in England during a ship wreck off the Whitby coast. The novel was made an early link between bats and vampires, and was the first to establish the myth of vamp to bat shapeshifting. These days, visitors can stay at the Bats and Broomsticks Guesthouse, or buy a Whitby Jet keepsake in the shape of a bat.

A child meets a tiny bat at Whitby Goth Weekend in 2009

For all intents and purposes, I can be considered a goth (although accurate classification within this subculture is complex). Like goth music, I was born in the early 80s. By 16 I had grown into a ‘baby bat’, in 2000 I stayed in the Bram Stoker building in the Royal Crescent for my first Whitby Goth Weekend, and last year I got the most goth job ever – working on the Bat Helpline for Bat Conservation Trust!

I’d seen the bat stall at the Whitby Goth Weekend market, but it was only when I started working for BCT that I became aware of how much goths do for bats. Since 1995, Whitby goths have, via raffles, bring and buy sales and bat merchandise, raised over £30,000 for bat conservation. At the November 2011 event, they brought in a grand total of £1888.22 - everyone at BCT would like to say a big thank you for that fantastic achievement!

Having become a BCT volunteer and membership secretary of the London Bat Group after finishing my seasonal work on the Bat Helpline, I was in a good position to find other goth events to fundraise at.

Jess selling bat pins at London club Reptile in 2012

Inspired by the lovely goths at Nottingham goth night Batronic, who used a combination of fundraising techniques to collect in aid of BCT at their launch night in January, I have now sold pins at London club Reptile for the last two months. There’s been a great response to the little metal brown long-eared badges, and I’ve enjoyed answering bat questions. Very few people realise that there are so many British species, and I generally get an ‘awwww!’ at the news that bats purr! Fortunately for me, Reptile has a good outside area, as making my bat spiel heard over the music inside can be tricky! I’ve also been experimenting with information signs and posters inside the club. Last month word had got around and some of the goths approached me to ask for a pin, often making donations greater than the suggested £1. Not long before I become known as Bat Girl, I suspect!

A BCT bat pin featuring the brown long-eared bat

BCT will soon have the new Bechstein’s bat design and more of the Lesser Horseshoe bat badges in stock. If you would like to sell bat badges at your local goth event visit our pin badges web page, or contact Teph Ballard on SBallard@bats.org.uk.

Have a great Whitby Goth Weekend!

Fangtastic Fundraising

As September drew to a close, and the weather got…hotter than it had been all summer, the Bat Helpline office at the Bat Conservation Trust licked their ice lollies and looked ahead to the end of October. Halloween being inextricably linked with bats already; it serves as an excellent opportunity to challenge the myths that persist about this charming mammal. But with all the spooky inspiration and ‘bat tat’ hitting the shops, it’s also a great time to throw a party in aid of bats. The fundraising team planned their Halloween Party Pack, and some staff took inspiration, volunteering to take up the challenge in their own time. The plotting began...

As we embarked with a careful mix of planning and optimism, and the sound advice of the party pack to guide us, it was clear that the first task was to find a venue. Helpline Officer David scoured the city for pubs, clubs and bars which a) didn’t charge for room hire and b) could be convinced to keep the bar take target low, to leave our guests with more money for the raffle, creepy cakes and bat badges (beautifully made by Anney Youngman, Scottish Bat Officer). With the date confirmed for Halloween itself, and Seasonal helpline Officer Jess established as ‘King of Decorating’ (n.b. Jess has no actual monarchic powers, she just likes to think she does), our next task was to get the word out.

Fantastic BCT pumpkin by Crystal Schintz

Despite being a fairly sociable bunch at BCT, after inviting all our friends it became clear we would need to advertise further afield if we were going to fill out the venue and put on the sort of party UK bats rightly deserve. As a result, we sent out an invitation to all BCT followers on facebook, as well as other wildlife groups we thought would appreciate a good old London knees up in honour of our furry flying friends. Slowly, the list of confirmed attendees grew, with nearly half those attending getting their tickets beforehand via our Justgiving page , and we breathed a collective sigh of relief. The rest of the tickets were sold on the door.

Another way that money was raised was via our bat raffle. The BCT office responded generously to the call for raffle prizes; they ranged from a number of bat themed items (wooden bat box, bat posters, cuddly toys) to the slightly more obscure (meerkat money box anyone?). All were well received, and special mention must go to Heather at BCT, who dealt well with the lack of a mic to call the raffle with the sort of lung capacity not normally associated with a dancing skeleton.

Anyway, back to the preparations… Having snared a minion in BCT’s Admin Assistant Sian (who is definitely a minion despite being significantly more learned in craft lore than Jess), Jess

arranged a pre-party decorating party at the BCT office, to take stock of the pound shop bat tat, horded decorations from previous years, and crafting templates which had accumulated around the helpline ‘bat cave’. Over wine and snacks, we painted cut-out bats; experimented with the idea of a ‘hook a bat’ game utilizing plastic long-eareds and corks; and stuck googly eyes to every available surface. Bea created a marvellous bat box for the silent auction; Dave (a crafting newbie!) made bat table cloths; and other staff offered to help with party ‘homework’.

The weekend before the party featured scary amounts of glitter, pumpkin innards and dry leaves (collected from Streatham Common for party floor decoration!). Bags of bat tat, boxes of prizes, and the kindly loaned DJ decks (thank you Psyche DJ !) arrived at Clerkenwell’s 1920 club during the day. By kick off a team of volunteers had stuck branches to pillars; hung beautifully crafted bats throughout; draped everything in fake cobweb; and were hurriedly tidying up.

In total, we raised almost six hundred pounds for bat conservation, earning a great sense of achievement and picking up some new craft skills on the way. As for the party, we’ll let the photographic evidence speak for itself!

If you ran a BCT bat fundraiser for halloween, you can send in your donations online!