Austin Bats Today
Though we see bat imagery throughout Austin, lots of Austinites have yet to experience one of the most extraordinary sights that takes place along among our busiest streets every year from March to November.
Below the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge lives the largest urban bat swarm in North America. When they emerge at night during "bat season," it resembles a cloud flying toward the east.
There are numerous places where you can see the group of bats. The Austin-American Statesman park on the southeast side of the South Congress Bridge is cost-free as well as open to the general public. There is also standing area along the walkway of the bridge itself. Another means to see the bats as well as the city is to take a boat trip on Lady Bird Lake.
The assistance framework of the South Congress Bridge, such as the buttresses, pylons, arches and also messages, are original to the 1910 building and construction. When the road was rebuilt in 1980, designers included small voids running along the size of the bridge's base.
Completely by crash, this drew in the bats that already populated the drains below the north side of the bridge. They remade their homes in the fractures, where they are able to pile on top of each other. Their populace boosted and got to maximum ability in just 3 years.
Currently the north end of the bridge is considered the "baby room," because this is where the mommies stash their infants. After they go on their nighttime hunt for food, they go back to the north end of the bridge as well as seek their puppies by sound as well as scent, which can Public Bat Watching and Sunset Tour take 2-20 mins. Once they nurse their children, the mothers nestle a bit more along the bridge.
The cloud of bats everybody wants to spot is the "first change" of bats exiting the spaces of the bridge to hunt for flying pests such as mosquitos and also moths. This initial wave flies out right prior to sunset, and also it can take 2-3 hours for every one of the bats to come out.
Throughout the gestational period in April-- May, the mommy bats are extremely starving so there are a lot of excellent nights to capture the 750,000 bats exiting. They all deliver in the same 2-week home window in early June, which creates them to leave later in the evening and decreases our chance to see them. In late July/early August the nursing duration is ending as well as the babies start flying by themselves. This is thought about "peak period," because the whole population of 1.5 million flies bent on hunt.
The bats do remain to fly out every single evening, but some nights they are really challenging to see. By the initial week of November, the bats have started to migrate, it is beginning to get chilly and there is low presence.
Every morning, the bats go back to the bridge about thirty minutes before daybreak. They are out for around 7-8 hours. They search on their own, as well as it is not as large of a spectacle when they return since they do not return in waves.