Congress St. Bridge bat watching!
Image from online since it's hard to get a good shot with my crappy camera at dusk.If you haven't done this - you should - now - seriously get in your car and drive to the Congress St. Bridge tonight. It's so much fun and it's FREE!
Last week Chris and I met the rest of the Walterscheidt clan at the Statesman park for a picnic and bat watching. We had Hooter's wings for the picnic and something about Chris' parents going into Hooter's to buy wings just cracks me up.
As the largest urban bat colony in North America, there are up to 1.5 million Mexican free tail bats that fly out of the Congress St. Bridge each night to go find food and eat those pesky mosquitoes (sure could have used a bat nearby when the mosquitoes were biting the heal of my foot this past weekend...ouch!).
Anyway, living in NM for so long I shouldn't be that impressed with bats flying at night. After all, I've seen the Carlsbad Cavern bats before. But there's something about 1.5 million bats living under a bridge that I drive on all the time that is just so cool. Plus, it's right in the middle of town and not out in BFE like Carlsbad is.
This was the second time I'd seen the Austin bats and it always amazes me how many people show up to watch this each night. Last time we went on a random Monday night. This time we went on a Thursday night - school night both times. And yet there are tons of people just standing around waiting and taking photos.
It was a lot of fun and next time I want to stand on the bridge instead of sitting on the sidelines. They seem to fly out of the north side of the bridge, fly over the bridge and head south...so how cool would that be to have them fly over you? Well, cool until one poops bat guano on your head. Ever smelled bat guano before? Ew.
Note to self: bring a rain coat just in case.
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