Austin Bats January



Though we see bat images around Austin, many Austinites have yet to experience among one of the most amazing sights that happens along among our busiest streets yearly from March to November.

Beneath the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge lives the largest city bat swarm in North America. When they emerge at night during "bat season," it resembles a cloud flying toward the eastern.

There are a number of locations where you can see the team of bats. The Austin-American Statesman park on the southeast side of the South Congress Bridge is complimentary and open up 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 watercraft trip on Lady Bird Lake.

The assistance structure of the South Congress Bridge, such as the buttresses, pylons, arches and also messages, are initial to the 1910 building. When the road was restored in 1980, engineers included little gaps leaving the length of the bridge's bottom.

Totally by accident, this brought in the bats that already inhabited the drains pipes beneath the north side of the bridge. They reprise their houses in the cracks, where they have the ability to stack on top of each various other. Their population increased and also reached optimum capability in just 3 years.

Now the north end of the bridge is taken into consideration the "nursery," since this is where the mommies stash their babies. After they take place their nighttime hunt for food, they go back to the north end of the bridge and seek their puppies by audio as well as scent, which can 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 voids of the bridge to hunt for flying pests such as mosquitos and also moths. This preliminary wave flies out right prior to sunset, and also it can take 2-3 hrs for all of the bats to find out.

During the gestational duration in April-- May, the mom bats are very starving so there are a lot of great nights to capture the 750,000 bats exiting. They all deliver in the same 2-week home window in early June, which triggers them to leave later in the evening and also reduces our opportunity to see them. In late July/early August the nursing period is finishing as well as the children start flying Austin Bat Watching Tours 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, yet some nights they are really challenging to see. By the initial week of November, the bats have started to migrate, it is beginning to obtain chilly and also 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 hrs. They search on their own, and it is not as large of a spectacle when they return since they do not return in waves.

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