Good morning. 
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 47. Sunrise is 7:30 AM and sunset 5:46 PM for 10h 15m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 5 PM and Downtown Whitewater’s Board of Directors meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1870, the United States Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast.
Eva Corlett reports Best bird a bat: tiny flying mammal wins New Zealand bird of the year competition:
In a huge upset to New Zealand birds, but a win for one of the country’s only native land mammals, a bat has swooped in “by a long way” to take out the annual bird of the year competition.
Forest and Bird, which runs the election, threw the bat among the pigeons as a surprise entry this year. The pekapeka-tou-roa, or long tailed bat, is one of two bats in the country and one of the rarest mammals in the world. It is as small as a thumb, and the size of a bumblebee when it is born.
The voting closed on Sunday night, which appropriately was Halloween. Forest and Bird’s Lissy Fehnker-Heather announced the win to RNZ’s Morning Report on Monday.
The pekapeka-tou-roa flew ahead of the avian flock by 3,000 votes, she said, adding that this year’s competition drew the highest number of total votes in the competition’s 17 year history.
“We had about 58,000 votes and they came from all around the world,” she said.
That’s one high-achieving bat.