Austin Bats Best Time

Though we see bat imagery all over Austin, many Austinites have yet to experience among one of the most amazing views that occurs along one of our busiest roads annually from March to November.

Underneath the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge lives the biggest metropolitan bat nest in The United States and Canada. When they arise in the evening throughout "bat period," it's like a cloud flying towards the eastern.

There are several areas where you can see the team of bats. The Austin-American Statesman park on the southeast side of the South Congress Bridge is totally free and open up to the public. There is also standing space along the pathway of the bridge itself. One more way to see the bats and also the city is to take a boat ride on Girl Bird Lake.

The support framework of the South Congress Bridge, such as the buttresses, pylons, arcs and blog posts, are initial to the 1910 construction. When the roadway was reconstructed in 1980, engineers consisted of small voids leaving the length 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 reprise 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 three 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 Austin Bat Watching Tours puppies by sound as well as scent, which can take 2-20 mins. Once they nurse their children, the moms nestle a bit further along the bridge.

The cloud of bats everybody hopes to see is the "first change" of bats exiting the voids of the bridge to search 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 hours for every one of the bats to find 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 exact 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 and also the babies begin flying on their own. This is taken into consideration "peak season," considering that the entire populace of 1.5 million flies out to quest.

The bats do continue to fly out each and every single night, yet some nights they are extremely difficult to see. By the very first week of November, the bats have started to move, it is starting to obtain chilly and also there is low presence.

Every morning, the bats go back to the bridge about thirty minutes before dawn. They are out for around 7-8 hrs. They hunt on their own, and it is not as large of a spectacle when they return since they do not return in waves.