Academy Building bat population going strong

Academy Building bat population going strong

Fraser during the lecture, pointing to the big brown bat, the species being observed.

Sava Marinkovic

SALISBURY — Devaughn Fraser loves bats, and she wants you to love them, too.

Fraser, a mammalian biologist with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), vowed to “change some minds” about the oft and unfairly maligned flying mammals at the third annual Bat Talk and Count on Thursday, July 25, in Salisbury.

“Bats aren’t flying rats, they don’t want to drink your blood, and they don’t get stuck in your hair,” Fraser informed the audience gathered at Salisbury’s Scoville Memorial Library, eager to dispel myths surrounding her favorite animal. “If one does swoop close to your head, it was probably saving you from that mosquito that was about to land on you.” In fact, all of Connecticut’s nine bat species eat only insects, and bats’ nationwide contribution to pest control is estimated to have an “economic value in the billions.”

However, nearly 50% of bat species are at risk of serious population decline within the next fifteen years, according to Fraser. A major contributing factor to this decline is the stateside appearance of white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungal disease, in 2006. “New York was ground zero for white-nose,” said Fraser. The disease was first attested in Connecticut in 2008, and only recently in Fraser’s native California.

On the west coast, management of emergent white-nose syndrome could involve preventive measures such as vaccines. In Connecticut, by contrast, the long-afflicted bat population already seems to be showing signs of adaptation, making habitat protection, technical assistance — by way of public education, land trusts, etc. — and population monitoring the preferred methods of mitigation.

To that end, and as the sun was nearly setting, the flock of newly-conscripted bat sympathizers was armed with flashlights and clickers and led from the library to Salisbury’s Academy Building.

Academy Building at night as bats are emerging.Sava Marinkovic

The Academy Building’s attic is the summer home of a colony of big brown bats — Connecticut’s most common cave bat species — and since 2022 Fraser has led local volunteers in an annual count of the colony’s population.

It’s possible, according to Fraser, that the colony roosting there represents an unbroken lineage of mothers and daughters stretching back to the attic’s very first inhabitants. “Some bat species can live up to forty years,” said Fraser, “and they return to the same roosts every summer.” Loyal to their origins, female offspring will then summer in the roosts of their mothers for generations.

As bats emerged, tumbling and diving, from beneath the Academy Building’s eaves to begin their nocturnal forage, volunteers tallied sightings and jogged the building premises seeking hotspots of activity. All-clicked, the population count came to 28, representing a relatively stable population based on prior counts.

Affording the rare opportunity to explore a winter bat cave, DEEP will be holding Bat Appreciation Day at Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine in East Granby, Connecticut, on Sunday, Sept. 15.

Latest News

Sharon Dennis Rosen

SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.

Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.

Keep ReadingShow less
‘Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between’ at the Moviehouse

Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”

Still from "The King of In between"

There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”

“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Haystack Book Festival: writers in conversation
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir \u201cEastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.\u201d
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir \u201cEastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.\u201d

The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.

Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival

Keep ReadingShow less