Why Tourists Flock to This Texan Bridge to Watch Bats 'Dancing' in the Sky at Dusk

Humans often feel attracted to the sights of fireflies or glowing fish, or those grizzly bears feeding their cubs in the mountains. But not every insect, bird or animal can paint a picturesque sight. Take bats, for instance. Most of us consider these nocturnal creatures as carriers of diseases or an infestation that hinders our premises. But, turns out, these creatures can be appealing too - especially when they are in millions. The evidence can be seen at a bridge in Texas where thousands of people gather each evening to watch them. Every day, from March till September, the skies of downtown Austin become stippled with this massive cloud of over 1.5 million bats, per Bat Conservation International.

Known by names like “Mexican free-tailed bats,” “Brazilian free-tailed bats,” and “South Congress Bridge Bats,” these bats are known to spend their summers in Austin, give birth to their pups in June, and then flock down to the south to spend their winter, particularly in Mexico. So, summertime brings millions of visitors and tourists to Austin’s Congress Avenue Bridge, something which contributes over $8 million in profits to Austin's tourism economy. Overhanging the waters of the Colorado River, on the south side of Texas’ Lady Bird Lake, the 14-foot steel and concrete bridge has been a nesting site for millions of these bats for decades. 

Every day, at dusk, visitors hop aboard kayaks, paddleboards, and swan boats to wait for these nocturnal creatures to emerge from their hiding. Millions of these creatures emerge from their crevices and swoop towards the sky, painting a surreal pattern of flickering black dots. These bats were known to reside in caves, trees, and tunnels, but nowadays, they are displaying a preference for buildings and glamorous human-made structures, such as the gaps and cracks in the concrete beams of the bridge that serve as thermal heat sinks, offering them ideal temperatures for survival. 

This modern population is the “largest urban bat colony in North America,” living under this bridge. Once they shoot out of their homes, they can gobble up 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of insects per night, including moths, beetles, wasps, ants, dragonflies, crickets, and grasshoppers. One freetail bat, BBC Discover Wildlife describes, is three-and-a-half inches long and weighs three-quarters of an ounce with broad, black, forward-pointing ears, wrinkled lips, narrow wings, and fur that varies from reddish to dark brown and grey in colour.

Their tails, BatsInAustin.com explains, are designed in a way so they can extend more than one-third beyond the size of their body, offering them indistinguishable flight patterns and precision. These flying rodents are also hailed for their pollinating skills. Not only do they pollinate crops, but they also prevent more than 20,000 eggs from being laid in a single night by slurping down crop pests, per AustinBats.org.

And since they eat so much of the food, they also produce enormous quantities of poop, which is rich in microbes and elements like nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. This nutrient-rich poop acts as a biological fertiliser that could cast a magical spell for a crop or a plant struggling with fertilisation. The BBC also describes a historical episode when manufacturers extensively mined the faeces of these bats to make gunpowder and natural fertilisers. They might not be as appealing as glowing fireflies, but they have their own talents. And people in Austin have learned to embrace that.

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