Austin Bat Bridge Cruise
Though we see bat imagery all over Austin, many Austinites have yet to experience among the most incredible 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 colony in North America. When they arise in the evening during "bat period," it's like 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 totally free and open up to the 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 flight on Woman 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 road was restored in 1980, designers included tiny spaces running along the size of the bridge's bottom.
Completely by crash, this drew in the bats that currently populated the drains below the north side of the bridge. They reprise their homes in the splits, where they are able to stack on top of each various other. Their population raised as well as reached optimum capability in simply 3 years.
Now the north end of the bridge is taken into consideration the "nursery," since this is where the moms 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 moms nestle a little bit further along the bridge.
The cloud of bats everybody hopes to see is the "very first change" of bats exiting the voids of the bridge to search for flying insects such as insects and moths. This first wave flies out right before sundown, as well as 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 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 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 considered "peak period," since the whole population Public Bat Watching and Sunset Tour of 1.5 million flies bent on hunt.
The bats do remain to fly out every evening, however some evenings they are extremely hard to see. By the very first week of November, the bats have actually 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, and it is not as large of a spectacle when they return since they do not return in waves.