Austin Bats Status

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

Below the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge lives the biggest urban bat swarm in The United States and Canada. When they emerge in the evening throughout "bat season," it's like a cloud flying towards the east.

There are numerous areas where you can see the group of bats. The Austin-American Statesman park on the southeast side of the South Congress Bridge is free and also available to the public. There is additionally standing space along the pathway of the bridge itself. One more method to see the bats and 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, arcs as well as messages, are initial to the 1910 building. When the road was restored in 1980, designers included tiny spaces leaving the size of the bridge's bottom.

Entirely by mishap, this attracted the bats that currently occupied the drains pipes beneath the north side of the bridge. They remade their residences in the fractures, where they are able to pile on top of each other. Their populace enhanced and got to maximum ability in just three years.

Currently the north end of the bridge is considered the "baby room," considering that this is where the mothers stash their children. After they go on their every night search for food, they return to the north end of the bridge and also search for their dogs by noise and also fragrance, which can take 2-20 minutes. Once they registered nurse their babies, the mommies take shelter a little bit additional along the bridge.

The cloud of bats everyone intends to catch sight of is the "initial shift" of bats leaving the spaces of the bridge to quest for flying bugs such as mosquitos as well as 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 find out.

During the gestational duration in April-- May, the mother bats are really hungry so there are a great deal of good evenings to catch the 750,000 bats leaving. They all give birth in the very same 2-week window in very early June, which triggers them to leave later on in the night and also lowers our opportunity to see them. In late July/early August the nursing period is finishing and the children start flying by themselves. This is considered "peak period," because the whole population of 1.5 million flies bent on search.

The bats do remain to fly out every evening, but some evenings they are very hard to see. By the first week of November, the bats have actually begun to move, it is starting to obtain cold as well as there is low exposure.

Every early morning, the bats return to the bridge concerning 30 minutes prior Austin Bat Watching Tours to sunrise. They are out for around 7-8 hrs. They hunt on their own, and also it is not as huge of a phenomenon when they come back given that they do not return in waves.