Austin Bats Drone
Though we see bat images around 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 colony in The United States and Canada. When they emerge in the evening throughout "bat season," it resembles a cloud flying towards the east.
There are numerous places 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 public. There is also standing space along the sidewalk of the bridge itself. An additional method to see the bats and the city is to take a watercraft ride on Girl Bird Lake.
The support framework of the South Congress Bridge, such as the buttresses, pylons, arcs and blog posts, 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 base.
Totally by accident, this brought in the bats that already lived in the drains below the north side of the bridge. They reprise their homes in the splits, where they are able to pile on top of each other. Their populace enhanced and got to maximum ability in just 3 years.
Now the north end of the bridge is taken into consideration the "nursery," given that this is where the moms stash their babies. After they take place their nightly search for food, they return to the north end of the bridge and also search for their dogs by sound and also scent, which can take 2-20 mins. Once they nurse their children, the moms nestle a bit more along the bridge.
The cloud of bats everybody wants to spot is the "initial shift" of bats leaving the spaces of the bridge to quest for flying bugs such as insects as well as moths. This first wave flies out right before sundown, and it can take 2-3 hrs for all of the bats to find out.
During the gestational duration in April-- May, the mother bats are extremely hungry so there are a lot of excellent 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 night and also reduces our opportunity to see Guide to Bat Season in Austin them. In late July/early August the nursing period is finishing and the infants start flying by themselves. This is taken into consideration "peak season," given that the entire populace of 1.5 million flies out to search.
The bats do continue to fly out every evening, however some evenings they are very tough to see. By the first week of November, the bats have actually started to migrate, it is beginning to get chilly and there is low presence.
Every morning, the bats go back to the bridge about thirty minutes prior to dawn. 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 considering that they do not return in waves.