City: Austin, TX

Category: Tours & Attractions

Insider Pick:

Description: Get your cooler and a comfy blanket and head out to Lady Bird Lake for a truly unique Austin experience. The largest urban bat colony in North America—as many as 1.5 million Mexican free-tails—resides in the crevices beneath the Congress Avenue Bridge for nearly 8 months of the year. When they take off from under the bridge for their evening flight for food, the spectacle is astounding. On their nightly forage the bats devour up to 30,000 pounds of insects. Aug is the best month for viewing the bats because they often come out before sunset. But they can be seen at other times from about mid-Mar to early Nov. You can see the bats from either side of Lady Bird Lake under the bridge or from the top of the bridge. There also are options to view the bats from boats or kayaks. See the Touring Greater Austin section in this chapter.Austin was scandalized when the huge colony first took up residence here in the early 1980s, even going so far as to petition to have the colony eradicated. But when citizens learned that the bats consume so many insects—thus cutting down the need for chemical insecticides—and that the bats pose no danger to the community, Austin changed its mind in a big way. Today our bat colony is a welcome addition to Austin. Nearby is the enormous bat sculpture, Night Wings, by artist Dale Whistler.