DURING NATIONAL BAT WEEK, I wanted to share with you the results from eight years of bat study here at our farm in the south of Georgia, USA.

Last January I reported on seven years of data. If you missed that, here it is:

In early June 2025, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources installed an Anabat recorder and left it for five days. I didn’t get to meet the batwomen coming or going. I was tending Little Fawn. So no pictures.

I wanted to share the new numbers with you.

Total bat calls climbed, almost to 2021 levels. I wish this figure, 357, were a testament to large numbers of bats. Except the recorder can not identify individual bats. So, 357 bat calls could mean a few bats flying around the recorder all night, calling incessantly.

The recorder identified, with 95% confidence, at least one

Hoary Bat (Lasiurus cinereus)—Georgia Species of Special Concern

Northern Yellow Bat (Lasiurus intermedius)—Georgia Species of Special Concern

Eastern Red or Seminole Bat (Lasiurus borealis, Lasiurus seminolus)—These two can’t be differentiated by ear, only by sight. However, based on our location, DNR suspects Seminole.

Brazilian Free-Tailed Bat (Tadarida brasiliensis)

However, the Evening Bat was still absent. The endangered Tri-colored wasn’t detected.

What this year’s study assures us is that at least four bats use the farm.

Total night-noise has fallen again. I wonder what that means. I’ve asked the biologists but they can’t predict.

I’m not sure what was happening in 2022, but that was a good year for nocturnal noise-making.

What We Can Do to Help Bats

Leave dead trees.

Reduce lawn-mowing and leaf-raking. Give your yard over to a native habitat, for the purpose of safe-guarding the insects that bats eat.

Reduce herbicide & pesticide use for the same reason.

Plant night-blooming native plants to attract insects.

Provide a water source, even something as simple as a trough.

Turn off night lights.

Keep cats indoors at dawn and dusk.

🦇 Happy National Bat Week! 🦇

A wagon load of pumpkins, mostly Seminole, my long-time favorite.Meet Me in the Pumpkin Patch

Here during pumpkin season I wanted to share a sheet of pumpkin recipes with you. This cookbooklet includes Thai Pumpkin Soup. Although my favorite is Seminole Pumpkin, any pumpkin or winter squash may be used in these recipes.

Thai Pumpkin SoupSeminole Pumpkin Recipes | Trackless Wild98.3KB ∙ PDF fileDownloadDownload

And also Stuffed Pumpkin.

Add Yours

If you want to send me a favorite pumpkin recipe, I will gladly add it to our “cookbooklet” and make it available to everyone. Here’s my email.

In Other Matters

🦬 Thank You for Making the Kickstarter a Thumping Success

Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting the Journey in Place Kickstarter.

The campaign ended on Saturday night at 10:25 p.m., after running 20 days. In an eleventh-hour surge, the book launched with 371 backers pledging $18,397. 🎉🎺🧨 My secret goal was 300 backers, and we shot beyond that. Thank you so much. I am very excited and grateful.

When I looked at Kickstarter’s analytics, they show that, by far, supporters for the project come from Substack. Thank you very much for your strong-hearted and everlasting support. 🥂

Next I will send out a Backer Survey out to gather email and mailing addresses. Right after that I’ll begin sending out copies of the book. I’ve ensnared my walking group into helping.

If you signed up for one of the workshops, I’ll be in touch.

🦬 Send Your Secret on a Postcard

I’ve opened a small doorway called Wild Confessions: Postcards from the Interior, similar to the famous PostSecret project. I’ll be publishing anonymous secrets that arrive on postcards. Some are already arriving.

Write your secret on a postcard. No rules, no return address, no names, no identifying evidence. The secret can be a sentence, a drawing, a fragment, a confession whispered to the trees. The secrets can be big or little.

If you create your own postcard, the standard size is 4 inches x 6 inches, on paper that is cardstock or thicker. That size will require a postcard stamp, which costs $.53. However, a postcard can be any size. Those larger than 5 inches x 7 inches will require a letter stamp of $.73.

Mail your postcard to Janisse Ray, 895 Catherine T. Sanders Road, Reidsville, GA 30453. USA, if you’re in another country.

I will be sharing these in Trackless Wild, as testimony to the mysterious, untamed lives we all lead.

🦬 What I’m Listening To

I had some chuckles listening to an episode of The Art of Resistance Podcast called “Hexing the Patriarchy: The art of W.I.T.C.H., 1968+.”

“In 1968 a splinter group of radical feminists introduced a new tactic to fight for women’s rights,” wrote Amy Lee Lillard, who describes herself as an “author and podcaster making weird art as resistance.” The tool W.I.T.C.H. used was a kind of street theatre it called the zap, which combined poetry, witchcraft, and protest. The zaps were hexes.

Halloween of 1968 the women hexed Wall Street with this chant:

“Wall Street, Wall Street, mightiest wall of all street. Trick-or-treat, corporate elite, up against the Wall Street!”

I guffawed at that.

Man, I loved the Sixties. Of course, I was in first grade when W.I.T.C.H. was hexing Wall Street, but as soon as I learned about the Sixties, I was all in.

🦬 What I’m Reading

I have to be honest. I’m rereading my own new book, Journey in Place: A Field Guide to Belonging, in order to look one last time for typos and other mistakes. Typos are like stinging nettle, except without the medicine—they show up where you least expect, and you never seem to get rid of them.

🦬 Phenology: This Week in the Living Landscape

The natural world is shuttering windows, closing up shop for winter. Leaves are dropping. Dormancy cometh. Fall wildflowers that got pollinated are busy in their little calyx workshops, making seeds and starting to market them. Seedheads of grasses, sedges, and forms are visible. Overhead, at night, birds migrate south. More hawks and kestrels have returned. Killdeer are back, although their numbers seem to have decreased even more. Light wanes, days and nights are cooler, and a frost may settle on us later this week.

🦬 If I Owe You Anything

I want to start 2026 with a clean slate. This request came in this week from a person who purchased an audiobook at my website:

Hi, Janisse! Love how you’re tying up all loose ends by year’s end. It’s inspiring. Thanks for this opportunity to retrieve your audiobook. Bookfunnel hasn’t sent me anything yet to download it, so if you could make that happen I’d be so grateful. Thanks and enjoy the upcoming holiday season! C—

C said she hadn’t wanted to bother me. Please believe me when I say that serving you and making good on all promises is extremely important to me. Don’t stay silent if I’ve forgotten something.

Be well, be of good service, be wild. 🦬

May the people of Jamaica recover swiftly from the ravages of Hurricane Melissa.