Evening flyer
True to her name this evening bat was out picking off moths well before dark. Injuries made her just a little too slow to make it in the wild, but she loves hunting the flight cage!
rescue release
Kindness Is Everything
The Flood family just became new members of the bat protection squad!
Thanks y’all for your act of compassion!
Here’s their post:
“We rescued this darling little Mexican Free-tailed bat earlier this evening as he was grounded in the middle of the road and nearly hit by several passing cars. We brought him home and called Lee and Diane at Austin Bat Refuge…they took him in and knew just what to do! 
💕 Thankfully he had no broken bones and he seemed to be very healthy. Afer some TLC from Lee and Diane @ Austin Bat Refuge, it sounds like he’s going to be ok and will most likely be released back into the wild! 
😊So thankful to them for all they do for these little guys… 💕If you ever find a grounded or injured bat, make sure to give them a call….and donate if you can! They have the biggest hearts for these little guys and do so much to house and care for the injured bats. Good people!!! Good cause!!! “
Cold-stunned bats Released!
The strongest cold front in years blew through last week and bats in Austin suffered through the cold and windy nights. Many fell, cold-stunned out of their roosts. But kind-hearted people safely contained some and brought them to us for thawing, some bats every day for a week! We filled their bellies with tasty mealworms and had the pleasure of sharing some Holiday spirit with them. And last night it was finally warm enough to release many of them.
This little guy is your bat Jocelyn. He’s a great bat and he would have died if you hadn’t cared enough to rescue him. Thank You!
And thanks to Christie, Christina, Giselle, and Natalie stopping and taking the time to care for those bats you saved. You are Heroes!
Here’s Natalie’s bat flying off into the night to join the few thousand others overwintering under the Congress Avenue Bridge.
26 degrees F!
Freezing cold night last night! Frozen water trough makes this bat (and his friends) unhappy!
Remember the little ones this Holiday Season!
Dear Bat Friends,
Please remember the little ones as we count our blessings.
Donate Now! to help Gabe the red bat and pups like this free-tailed baby.
As we enter the holiday season, the world celebrates community, supporting the causes that make the world a better place for all its inhabitants. In our first year, Austin Bat Refuge has already created a center of gravity, attracting donations and a small core of young interns, many or whom will go on to careers in wildlife work. In this season of giving, we ask you to get involved and support Austin Bat Refuge, the only organization in Central Texas caring exclusively for orphaned, injured, and displaced bats.
Your kind donation is critical to bats, our fascinating friends and allies.
Donate Here to help these wonderful, misunderstood beings.
Or write a check and mail to:
Austin Bat Refuge
P.O. Box 49902
Austin, TX 78765
Here are other ways you can show your support:
Sign up for our Newsletter:
Volunteer:
Donate Items:
and yes, as many of you have done, even
Rescue a Bat in Trouble
or simply:
Follow us on Social Media:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Those of you who have brought us an injured bat may have received the following note from us, thanking you for your efforts. We’ll include it here for those of you landing here from social media:
Dear Bat Friend,
Thank you for your kindness in taking the time to rescue the bat you brought to us; we are in awe of the people who have gone so far out of their daily routine to help an animal in trouble.
We hope that you found it a meaningful experience. It meant a great deal to the bat you rescued, and to us; you are part of an ever-growing group of people who care for an animal that many find, at best, unlovable.
Attempting to rescue a bat can seem frightening for people who encounter them, displaced or injured, around their homes or workplaces, and you may even have been ridiculed by those who don’t understand that bats are worthy of care. But you know how rewarding it can be to make the effort to help wildlife.
If it is possible for you to donate, we ask for your financial assistance so that we can continue to serve as a refuge for the injured and orphaned bats that are brought to us by caring people like you.
Your donation will help save the lives of many more little bats in trouble, like the one you saved.
Please Donate Here
And please become a part of our team by joining our Bat Pack!
Austin Bat Refuge cares for these bats in a setting that minimizes their stress and fear. Once critical care has stabilized them, they recover in a natural outdoor setting prior to release. If non-releasable, they live a high quality of life with us in the bat gardens or in spacious indoor habitats with plenty of enrichment. Our many visitors have hearts and minds changed by the experience of seeing bats as we care for them. And seeing them in a natural setting is an educational opportunity leveraged by our social media that serves to counter eons of negative myths about bats.
We have cared for close to 750 bats in recent years (139 so far this year), with the majority of them being released back into the wild. If they make it through the first few days, we have a success rate of approximately 86% (which includes those non-releasable individuals living out their lives in our refuge).
Your tax-deductible donation to Austin Bat Refuge will be deeply appreciated, and promptly acknowledged with a document for your tax deduction. We are an all-volunteer, state-permitted 501(c)3 NON-PROFIT organization and receive no government funding. Our costs (not counting volunteer time) can be under $20 for a healthy, quickly-released bat to $200 or more for a bat with a broken bone. Bats that live out their lives in our refuge incur ongoing costs to keep them healthy and well fed.
It is our privilege to care for these orphaned, injured and displaced bats, and your support will give us the ability to do more. Please give us and them a helping hand by mailing a check to our P.O. Box address or contributing to Austin Bat Refuge at this link: Donations
ANY DONATION AMOUNT IS APPRECIATED! And if you can’t give money, please consider donations of volunteer time or items on our Wish List
Thanks so much for caring about these noble, valiant, and amazing flying mammals.
And do please become a part of our team by joining our Bat Pack!
You’ll get our ABR Newsletter with notices for our springtime Bat Walks!
Thanks so much,
Lee Mackenzie
512-695-4116
leemack@austinbatrefuge.org
Dianne Odegard
512-799-8847
Dianne@austinbatrefuge.org
Austin Bat Refuge
https://austinbatrefuge.org
Our radar video on the Today Show.
The Today Show came to visit Congress Ave Bridge and Bracken Cave for a story on Bat Tourism.
Featured is our Mexican free-tailed bat Freida and included is our radar video of the Bracken bats.
Too bad they didn’t credit us for either one of these!
Gabe, the Leader of the Bat Pack
Gabe, the Leader of the Bat Pack, howls to proclaim his dominance over all he surveys!
He wowed over 5,000 students in an on-line Distance Learning event at the Texas Wildlife Association.
Their Halloween annual with our bats, called Bats-a-Billion, is their biggest online event of the year every year.
In addition to Gabe, we brought Buffy (a northern yellow bat), Zonker (an evening bat), and Buddy (a Mexican free-tailed bat).
They are all good bats!
Tri-colored South Austin
Here’s a beautiful tri-colored female that had been roosting in a stairwell landing on the second story of an apartment building in South Austin. She was in the same place for about a week with no sign that she had been able to fly or feed. Her location made her vulnerable to maintenance workers or perhaps a fearful apartment dweller with a broom.
Wildlife lovers Sonja Peterson and Thanh Vo had been checking on her and were worried that she had not seemed to move for a long time. They were relieved to finally see her stretch her wings a few days back, but were concerned that she might be injured and unable to feed herself. So we went to look and spotted her immediately when we pulled up to the building. We plucked her off the wall (with gloves on) and brought her back to check her out in the flight cage.
Her wings were beautiful, no spotting, no tears, no broken bones.
We checked her out under UV light and no florescence showed up that would indicate Pd, the fungus that causes White-nose Syndrome.
She flew right off when given the opportunity and we watched as she did about six laps around the aviary. This is way more continuous flight than the last tri-colored we took in a few days ago.
So this leaves us to wonder why she would roost in such an exposed location, vulnerable to any humans walking by or even grackles which could easily spot her against the white stucco.
Most of our tri-colored bats come to us from the upper levels of apartment buildings that have open-ended corridors leading to the various apartments. We think the bats consider these to be open-ended caves and feel quite at home there. At this time of year both sexes of tri-coloreds should be swarming at cave mouths and mating, the females storing sperm for spring births. Is it possible this bat is misplaced and hanging around wondering where the guys are?
We’ll feed her up and then bring her back to the same area and hope she finds a real cave to get her back on track.
Check out our local species info page: https://austinbatrefuge.org/tri-colored-bat/
Sonja and Thanh are doing great work with the feral cats around their apartment. Thanks to them this bat and all other wildlife will fare much better in their area. Thanks for caring Sonja and Thanh!
Tri-colored sonogram / sounds of silence
So our tri-colored bat checks out clean under the black light, no orange fluorescence, no spotting in normal light, we think she’s clean for Pd, no White-nose Syndrome.
She’s not sustaining flight however. She flew the length of the flight cage once but landed and has only taken short flights since then. It is said that they are sporadic flyers with a short elliptical flight patterns, so this may be normal. But she did not fly away when she had the opportunity as we were collecting her, so we’ll need to check her out some more to make sure she has the strength a bat needs to survive in the wild.
On the left is the recording of her call as she made that one flight down the length of the flight cage. On the right is a call from the reference library of a tri-colored bat in Mammoth Cave State Park in Kentucky from back in 2007. Tragically, tri-colored bats in that area have been decimated by White-nose Syndrome, numbers have plummeted 80% since it’s arrival in 2013 and that song is likely not heard very often in that area nowadays. How sad to think of all the bats that have perished from this terrible disease. And awful to think we’ll likely be dealing with it ourselves in a year or two.
She weighs 8 grams! So surprising that a tiny bat would weigh so much. She looks about the same size as our evening bat Zonker, not way smaller as we would have expected.
Tri-colored bat – North Austin
This tri-colored bat was hanging in an apartment building 2nd story hallway in North Austin for the past few days.
She hadn’t left to forage and was soon to attract attention from the maintenance staff, so our good friend Ed Sones brought her in. She showed just how quick a tri-colored bat can be when Ed was collecting her, but did not fly away, so we’ll need to check for wing damage once she gets more accustomed to us.
Almost all our tri-colored bats come from apartment building hallways on the upper levels. They must think these open ended hallways are just another cave and perfectly suitable for them; and they would be if it weren’t for all those pesky humans!
Her orange forearms, tiny size, pointy nose, and longer ears all indicate Perimyotis subflavus, formerly Pipistrellus subflavus, commonly known as Tri-colored bat, formerly Eastern Pipistrelle. Whew, they sure do make it complicated!
Check out her range and species info on our webpage https://austinbatrefuge.org/tri-colored-bat/