When the call came in to rescue bats in the University of Texas tower, we were super pumped up!
Carin Peterson, head of UT Animal Make-Safe, had notified us there may be many hundreds of bats trapped behind newly installed pigeon netting on the roof.  So we geared up for rescue, readying a dozen habitats to house cold bats in torpor, with the hopes that we could relocate them to safer locations.

We met Carin, along with Anthony and Kurt with the construction company doing the renovations, and headed up the heavily-secured elevators toward the top of the tower.  Curt called for a construction break as we traversed the rooftop (omg BATS and bat people!) and climbed down ladders to other roof surfaces. We were disappointed to find that the bats were not in the top of the tower (that apparently is reserved for the resident Peregrine falcon featured in the UT Tower FalconCam) but were around the roof decks below, where two courtyards topped out near the president’s veranda.  We did get to see the lights that light the tower orange after big wins, they are strangely green when off.  They white lights that light the tower attract lots of insects and are likely why the bats are there in the first place.

The casement windows of offices which faced the courtyards radiate heat which flows up five or six stories and provides a warm area, sheltered from cold winds, for bats to overwinter.  The netting was installed a few months ago to prevent pigeons from residing in the courtyard (where office workers had been feeding them) and the bats showed up just three weeks before out visit. It seems the bats recognized that this netted area was not only warm, but now, additionally, provided safety from predatory birds. The 2″ x 2″netting is the type used for baseball batting (bats!) cages, rated for 300 lbs and taughtly strung across the tops of the courtyards and down between adjoining vertical openings to the roof deck.  The netting itself is quite expensive (a small section alone was $5,000) and the scaffolding required to install and or modify it likely cost about as much as the netting.

The concern is that bats may have become trapped under the netting with no way to get out.  Close inspection seemed to indicate the bats could crawl up the wall surfaces under the stainless steel guy wires that hold the edges of the netting, thus coming and going at will to their new home.  The installation was quite good, but there are a number of areas where bats can get through the sides. If bats are entering through the top of the 2×2 mesh, the gaps at the side may be the only way the can get out to feed.  Even though bats can easily fly up to hang from the top of netting, we don’t feel that they could crawl or pull their way up throught the 2×2 mesh. A normal bat exclusion allows bats to drop down exclusion tubes to leave a roost, but prevents them from flying back up and in.  Any potential exclusion here would be upside down, requiring bats to exit vertically up and prevent them from dropping back down in.  Interesting!

Our visit found small clusters of bats in areas out of our reach, so no big bat rescues on this day!  Curt said that the bats seem to come and go,as he notices them in varying numbers and locations from day to day.  Since we have observed bridge bats surviving up to three weeks of 20F temperatures before surging out again once evening temperatures moderate, we asked Curt to inspect the roof deck below daily to make sure there is no “fallout”, our term for when cold-stunned bats just can’t take it anymore and drop from the bridges.  In our experience, they are generally ok when this happens, they simply need to be warmed up, rehydrated, fed, and then can be released.

So inspections in the coming days, should tell us if the bats are ok in this location or if we somehow need to remove them and replace the expensive netting. We feel that smaller mesh netting should have been deployed and efforts made to seal the edges to prevent bat entry. But coexisting with bats may require livng with the newly installed netting, harvesting guano as if collects on roof decks below, and reinstalling the window screens on the casement windows facing the courtyards.  If those screens have been lost, then new ones could be ordered and installed using magnetic strips that hold them tight to the metal window frames, preventing any bats from getting in trouble accidentally entering any of the offices.

We remain ready to help in any way possible to promote bat/human co-existence. And who knows, maybe the UT president can wine and dine big donors by hosting bat emergence events on his rooftop veranda! Could be a win, win, win situation; bats, humans, and UT sports!

 


Eeyore is the grumpy donkey in the classic children’s tale Winnie-the-Poo.
He mopes around so much that his buddies throw him a birthday party to cheer him up.

Well, even bat workers can get a little mopey when things don’t go well for bats.  And bats have hard lives.
This year, the local non-profit organization The Friends of the Forest Foundation cheered up Austin Bat Refuge with a wonderful donation from the proceeds of Eeyore’s Birthday Party!
Thanks so much from us at ABR to this wonderful organization that has been giving back to the community for decades!

Wow! This brought a huge smile to all our faces!  Love you all!
Please join us all in cheering up Eeyore again next year on April 27, 2019 (always the last Saturday in April).
Next year’s event will be Eeyore’s 56th Birthday Party!
Please bookmark eeyores.org, put on a costume (or nothing at all!) and meet us there!

Thank You Lori Moore – and all the good people at FotFF for the very generous donation!

 


Brushy Creek Bat Fest was fun!

It was great to see the enthusiasm of all the young bat fans!  This one came decked out in all her best bat finery.
Love the bat berrettes and the Vampirella shirt! She loved Kyndal and her little free-tailed bat pup!

Here’s how the day started.

“Hey Taz!  It’s Brushy Creek Bat Fest today!  Let’s go show the kids how cool bats are!”
He was a star!  And he got 998 likes on Instagram!  What a great bat! Can’t somebody give him just a few more likes?


This Mexican free-tailed skypup is multi-tasking, doing his yoga while eating his breakfast!


After the crowds leave Congress Avenue Bridge, a few more bats take flight!
All the best girls!


Funny (and informative) post from David Curiel, the concierge at the Whisper Valley community.

Lone bat found on our solar equipment! from Austin


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 Bridge feedback

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!


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!

 


On the evening of April 8th radar picked up the largest flight we have ever seen from Frio Bat Cave. Our guess is there were as many as 17 million bats in the air at one time around 2:06 Universal Coordinated Time or about 8:57 Central Daylight Time.

They emerged around 7:19 pm CDT and some went 80 miles SE to around Christine, TX
Most went at least as far as 50 miles to crop fields around Pearsall, TX.

 


The following is an article by Zeke MacCormack, a San Antonio Express-News staff writer:
Published in the San Antonio Express-News  April 5, 2018

Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from the Bracken Cave at dusk to foray for food on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017. An estimated 20 million bats make Bracken Cave their home from March through November, making it the world's largest bat colony. MARVIN PFEIFFER/ mpfeiffer@express-news.net Photo: Marvin Pfeiffer, Staff / San Antonio Express-News / Express-News 2017

Photo: Marvin Pfeiffer, Staff / San Antonio Express-News
Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from the Bracken Cave at dusk to foray for food on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017.

 

In a double dose of troubling news, the fungus blamed for killing millions of East Coast bats since its discovery there in 2007 has been found in Central Texas and on a Mexican free-tailed bat — both firsts.

However, the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife announcement of those discoveries Wednesday noted that no Texas bats have been found exhibiting signs of the malady known as “white nose syndrome.”

“Biologists say it usually takes a few years after detecting the fungus for the disease to manifest,” said the release that identified four new Texas counties where Pseudogymnoascus destructans fungus had been found, bringing the total to 10.
It previously was found on cave bats, tri-colored bats and Townsend’s big-eared bats.

In the San Antonio region, the fungus was detected on bats at two sites in Kendall County and two sites in Blanco County.
Kendall County is now the southernmost location in the nation where researchers have discovered the fungus, which was first detected in Texas in 2017 in the Panhandle, officials said.
The deadly illness typically strikes hibernating bats, causing declines of winter populations by more than 90 percent in some locations.
So its presence in free-tailed bats, which migrate rather than hibernate, raises a new series of concerns.
“They migrate in huge populations all over the country so they could spread the disease much faster,” said Jonah Evans, a TPWD mammalogist
The Mexican free-tail bat carrying the fungus was found at the Old Tunnel State Park in Kendall County, he said.
Evans described researchers as shocked by the results of testing on skin swabs that were collected from bat wings and muzzles between December and last month by a coalition of biologists from Bat Conservation International, Texas A&M University’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences and its Natural Resources Institute.

“We were disappointed to see that it had moved southward as fast as it has,” Evans said. “We all expected it would move around the state, but it’s kind of shocking to see it happen this fast.”
The recent testing also found the fungus on bats in Foard and Wheeler counties, in North Texas, officials said.
The TPWD release said, “Because bats usually produce just one offspring per year, researchers are concerned it could take many decades for some populations to recover from a major decline.”
A widespread outbreak of the deadly disease in free-tailed bats could hold financial implications for agricultural producers who rely on the winged mammals to eradicate insects that feed on their crops.

The estimated value of bat pest control is $1.4 billion annually in Texas, the TPWD release says.
“Mexican free-tailed bats are key predators of agricultural pests in Texas, primarily moths that feed on corn and cotton,” said Mylea Bayless of Bat Conservation International.
“Since white nose syndrome is a disease of hibernating bats, we’re cautiously optimistic that Mexican free-tailed bats — which don’t hibernate — will fare better than other species in terms of contracting the disease and experiencing mortality from it,” she said.
The free-tailed bat also is an iconic presence, she said, drawing visitors watch them emerge by the millions from Bracken Cave just north of San Antonio, the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin and other major colonies.

“This bat is special to Texas, which is one of the reasons that this news is particularly distressing,” Bayless said Wednesday.
Beyond trying to track the spread of the fungus, she said, “Bat conservation International is working with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and others to explore and test potential treatments for white nose syndrome.”

Zeke MacCormack is a San Antonio Express-News staff writer. Read more of his stories here. | zeke@express-news.net | @zekemac