Austin Bats Bridge Video

Though we see bat images throughout Austin, lots of Austinites have yet to experience one of 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 largest urban bat swarm in The United States and Canada. When they emerge at night throughout "bat season," it resembles a cloud flying towards the east.

There are several 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 sidewalk of the bridge itself. An additional 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, arches and also messages, are original to the 1910 building and construction. When the road was rebuilt in 1980, designers included tiny spaces running along the size of the bridge's bottom.

Entirely by mishap, this brought in 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 boosted and got to maximum ability in simply 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 aroma, which can take 2-20 minutes. Once they registered nurse their infants, the mothers nestle a bit more along the bridge.

The cloud of bats everyone 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 preliminary wave flies out right prior to sundown, and it can take 2-3 hrs for all of the bats ahead out.

During the gestational duration in April-- May, the mom bats are really hungry so there are a great deal of great evenings to catch the 750,000 bats leaving. They all give birth in the very same 2-week home window in very early June, which triggers them to leave later in the evening and also reduces our chance to see them. Public Bat Watching and Sunset Tour In late July/early August the nursing period is finishing as well as the children start flying by themselves. This is thought about "peak season," considering that the entire population of 1.5 million flies bent on search.

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

Every morning, the bats go back to the bridge about half an hour 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.