PORTLAND — Whale Watch Week in Oregon returned in-person for the first time since the pandemic on Wednesday, Dec. 28, drawing visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of the annual gray whale migration to the state’s coastline.

By early afternoon, more than 500 people had flocked to the Whale Watching Center in Depoe Bay, where a volunteer equipped with binoculars pointed out whales in the distance. A spokesperson for Oregon State Parks, which organizes the event, described scenes of excited spectators as several were spotted.

“She’s seeing the spray and calling it out,” Stefanie Knowlton told The Associated Press on the phone as she watched the center’s volunteer, the crowd cheering in the background. “There’s just so much energy. You could just really feel that people were ready to come back and watch whales together.”

Volunteers will be at 17 state parks along the coast through Jan. 1 to help people spot the nearly 20,000 gray whales that make the southward journey to Mexico every year.

One of the sites, Cape Meares, was closed Dec. 28 after strong winds the previous day knocked over trees, Knowlton said.

Oregon State Parks organizes whale-watching events twice a year, in the winter for gray whales’ southern migration and in the spring for their return to northern waters near Alaska.

Oregon’s central coast is also a hot spot for whale-watching from June to mid-November, when the gray whales that remained in the state’s coastal waters during the summer migration come close to shore to feed, according to the agency.

World population projected at 7.9 billion on New Year’s Day

WASHINGTON — The world population is projected to be 7.9 billion people on New Year’s Day 2023, with 73.7 million people added since New Year’s Day 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau said Thursday, Dec. 29.

That marks a 0.9% increase in the world population over the past year. During January 2023, 4.3 births and two deaths are expected worldwide every second, the Census Bureau said.

The U.S. population on New Year’s Day 2023 is projected to be 334.2 million people, with 1.5 million people added since New Year’s Day 2022, or an increase of just under a half percent.

The U.S. is projected to have a birth every nine seconds and a death every 10 seconds in January 2023. Net international migration is expected to add a person to the U.S. population every 32 seconds. The combination of births, deaths and net international migration increases the U.S. population by a person every 27 seconds, according to the Census Bureau.

Bats plunge to ground in cold; saved by incubators, fluids

HOUSTON — Some 1,600 bats found a temporary home this week in the attic of a Houston Humane Society director, but it wasn’t because they made it their roost.

It was a temporary recovery space for the flying mammals after they lost their grip and plunged to the pavement after going into hypothermic shock during the city’s recent cold snap.

On Wednesday, Dec. 28, over 1,500 will be released back to their habitats — two Houston-area bridges — after wildlife rescuers scooped them up and saved them by administering fluids and keeping them warm in incubators.

Mary Warwick, the wildlife director at the Houston Humane Society, said she was out doing holiday shopping when the freezing winds reminded her that she hadn’t heard how the bats were doing in the unusually cold temperatures for the region. So she drove to the bridge where over 100 bats looked to be dead as they lay frozen on the ground.

But during her 40-minute drive home, Warwick said they began to come back to life, chirping and moving around in a box where she collected them and placed them on her heated passenger seat for warmth. She put the bats in incubators and returned to the bridge twice a day to collect more.

Two days later, she got a call about more than 900 bats rescued from a bridge in nearby Pearland, Texas. On the third and fourth day, more people showed up to rescue bats from the Waugh Bridge in Houston, and a coordinated transportation effort was set up to get the bats to Warwick.

Warwick said each of the bats were warmed in an incubator until their body temperature rose and then hydrated through fluids administered to them under their skin.

After reaching out to other bat rehabilitators, Warwick said it was too many for any one person to feed and care for and the society’s current facilities did not have the necessary space, so they put them in her attic where they were separated by colony in dog kennels and able to reach a state of hibernation that did not require them to eat.

“As soon as I wake up in the morning I wonder: ‘How are they doing, I need to go see them,’ “ Warwick said.

Now, nearly 700 bats are scheduled to be set back in the wild Wednesday at the Waugh Bridge and about 850 at the bridge in Pearland as temperatures in the region are warming. She said over 100 bats died due to the cold, some because the fall itself — ranging 15-30 feet — from the bridges killed them; 56 are recovering at the Bat World sanctuary; and 20 will stay with Warwick a bit longer.

The humane society is now working to raise money for facility upgrades that would include a bat room, Warwick added. Next month, Warwick — the only person who rehabilitates bats in Houston — said the society’s entire animal rehabilitation team will be vaccinated against rabies and trained in bat rehabilitation as they prepare to move into a larger facility with a dedicated bat room.

“That would really help in these situations where we continue to see these strange weather patterns come through,” she said. “We could really use more space to rehabilitate the bats.”

Houston reached unusually frigid temperatures last week as an Arctic blast pushed across much of the country. Blizzard conditions from that same storm system are blamed for more than 30 deaths in the Buffalo, New York-area.