Upward Dog?
This Mexican free-tailed skypup is multi-tasking, doing his yoga while eating his breakfast!
Congress Avenue Bridge
After the crowds leave,
After the crowds leave Congress Avenue Bridge, a few more bats take flight!
All the best girls!
Reddit post cracks us up
Funny (and informative) post from David Curiel, the concierge at the Whisper Valley community.
Love from Laura and Jordi – thanks so much!
We’re not usually ones to toot our own horns, but these notes in our Bat Journal on our Information Table at Congress Avenue Bridge meant a lot to us.
Laura is great friends with Adria Lopez Baucells, whom we greatly admire, and Jordi knows Carles Flaquer, who visited our facility a few years back and is a wonderful person and dear friend.
Congress bats climbed to altitude directly over the bridge Saturday night, then turned & headed way South, with the wind. Great visit with Laura & Jordi from Barcelona! These lovely and gracious scientists are friends of our favorite bat people Adrià López Baucells & Carles Flaquer from Museu de Ciències Naturals de Granollers. This group is doing great work and we just love them. Look them up, follow them, and be awed!
Friday the 13th
We got lucky on Friday the 13th and had lovely weather for our education table at the Bat Viewing Area.
We shared the wonders of bats with scores of out-of-towners.
We so enjoyed meeting Sonia from Austria, Anne from France, Ali & Xav from Paris, and that group of impressive women in town for the Anthropology conference, from Virginia, Canada, the UK and Cyprus.
What fun! Thanks for visiting with us y’all!
We hope the bats were as lucky as we were! We at the Bat Viewing Area all watched on live radar as a lovely Seabreeze pushed insects toward the Hill Country and the Bracken bats foraged along the front. But then things changed.
The lovely Seabreeze turned into wicked storms from the northwest. Davis Blowout, Huber Limestone Mine, McNeil Bridge, and Congress Bridge bats all appeared to have been caught out in the storms. We hope they sheltered at McNeil to escape the worst of it.
Bats caught in hailstorms frequently experience broken wing bones from the hail. Guess we’ll see how many bats are found by humans and brought to us today. Bless their brave little hearts!
Norman’s Release!
It’s Congress Avenue Bridge! Thought I’d never see it again!
Stretch ……… a little pushup …….. and Back to the Wild Skies!
This little beauty was Kyndal’s save! She rescued him from the Norman Hackermann Building at the University of Texas.
Nice job Kyndal!
Pre-Migration Activity
Lots of Central Texas bat activity on a chilly evening. Devil’s Sinkhole, Old Tunnel, and Huber really show up strongly because of their more isolated locations. Still a strong flight from Congress, so our newly released bats have plenty of company.
Bats prefer the Halloween Department
Latest research shows that 3 out of 4 Mexican free-tailed bats found in Saver’s Thrift Store prefer the Halloween department over other parts of the store. Even though bats have nothing to do with Halloween 😉 , they nonetheless provided holiday ambience as they hung decoratively up with the fake cobwebs up in the ceiling! The other was recovered from over the cash register area, so perhaps the last one was making sure they got paid for their advertising efforts!
They all were fine, just wondering why Savers keeps inviting them into the store and then freaking out about it. Humans!
Here are three of the four a few days later, ready to be released under Congress Avenue Bridge, as soon as F1 takes down the fences for their party at the bat-viewing area.
While they were resting up for their release, an immature Texas rat snake curled up under the roof tarp to stay dry and bask. He was within a few inches of one of the boys and would have had him for lunch but for the netting in between them. Watch out you valiant little bats!
Here’s the rat snake getting relocated a few miles down the creek.
Here they are finally getting released at Congress Avenue Bridge after their circuitous adventure!
Three bat talks in one day!
Great work Di! The first two talks were to veterinarians at the Convention Center, the last one for the Rotary Club on their riverboat cruise. The boat cruise was really great! The city looked beautiful at night and the bats were translucent in the bridge lights!
The Healing Power of Travel
A recent episode of Rick Steves Europe titled “Greece’s Peloponnese” included Epidavros, the Greek healing center where doctor-priests performed the work of Esclepios, the Greek god of medicine. This center served Greeks from ~400 BC to 426 AD.
When demonstrating the acoustics of the 12,000 seat amphitheater that entertained those who traveled there for healing, Steves gave a speech meant to sound as if delivered by an ancient Greek: “Friends, Greeks, wayfarers, in these times of discord, fear is rampant in our society. I contend that the flip-side of fear is understanding, and those who travel reap great understanding by meeting people who hold OTHER truths to be self-evident and God-given.”
We love this about Rick Steves and we wish that we could travel more to experience the truths of other cultures. We hope that one day we can do so, but in the meantime, we get to have travelers come to us as we staff the information table at the Congress Avenue Bridge Bat Viewing Area. Thanks so much to all the intrepid travelers who took the time to write in our Bat Journal!
In the future we’ll make a point of asking more about THEIR lives. Much as we love to have them log their impressions of the Austin bats, we want them to share THEIR truths and gain some insight into the way THEY see the world!
