After a first surge around the 9th of March and a second surge on March 14th, a period of cold weather suppressed flights from Congress for another few days.
But last night, March 20th saw two flight totaling around 720 thousand bats from Congress Avenue Bridge. This seems to be the summer colony returned for the season. Were the first surges migrants, or our bats returning in stages? We’d love to know.
We have taken in 34 bats during this spring migration which started around March 8th..
We have had 8 intakes in the last two days, mostly juvenile female free-tails. This could be the bulk of the summer colony trying to remember where the maternity roost is.
Here’s a video of the first flight of over 700k bats from Congress this spring.
Actually two flights the first small one 16 minutes before sunset and the second larger flight 10 minutes after sunset.