WHEN THE BATS CAME HOME TO ROOST
mmmmmm m m Thursday
March Twelve 2009
I am recreating here a diary event from 1988. I did little to alter the original thing. This is pretty much as it was written. I’d be a fool to go fact-finding and fault-finding at this late date. However, some updated info was torn from websites. I think the colony was only about 700,000 in 1988 and the mother lode was about 2 million, but who knows. Crikey Mikey! I’m trying to write all this down and more while I’m still on this side of death’s door. I didn't take notes during the trek described here. But I scribbled everything down the moment I returned to my First-and-Barton Springs Road apartment. I wore a watch, but the time codes are iffy.
1988
Few people outside of Texas know that in Austin there resides the world’s largest urban population of bats. The Austin bats’ permanent home is Bracken Cave, about 70 miles south of San Antonio, and that colony is the largest congregation of mammals on earth. There are 20-40 million of them there, and they consume upwards of 200 tons of insects nightly. The Austin colony numbers approximately 1.5 million individuals. These Mexican split-tail bats have been making their home beneath Austin’s Congress Avenue bridge at least since 1981 when the old bridge (1890) was replaced. The bridge was renamed the Anne B. Richards Bridge in 2007 and in 2008 the body of water over which it spans was renamed from Town Lake to Lady Bird Lake. But the bats don’t care about any of that. The lake is formed by stemming the flow of the Colorado River at Longhorn Dam a couple of miles downriver from the bridge. There’s talk of a 300-pound catfish living in the lake. <> One of the living pleasures of Austin is to watch the bats take off from beneath the bridge each evening. Practically in unison, the whole contingent leaves home base to forage the Austin region, consuming a couple of million bugs before the dawning calls them home – to sleep and I guess spend quality time with their bat-families and bat-friends.
Thursday
July 21
1988
After living in Austin for 11 years, this is a first – watching Austin’s famous clouds of bats emerge from beneath Congress Avenue Bridge. Later this evening I wondered what form these clouds might take when all their parts are homeward bound.
0622
Sunday
August
Seven
1988
And on this early morning I set off from my apartment to the bridge. The crescent moon is rising with a companion, Jupiter. There, in the easterly sky they seem so close. The morning is very quiet. No one is about. It’s Sunday. <> My vantage point is from the east-side railing about one-third the way northbound. If only for this Sunday I’m glad that to most everyone else, this is a wake-late day. Here and now such privacy visits me in the very heart of town.
0634
A group of about 15 bats arrive. A little bunch of them, in some kind of formation - I wonder what this means - that quickly disappears beneath the bridge beneath my feet. I drew a sketch of the area.
0638
From out of nowhere now it starts raining bats. From out of nowhere here they are, raining in, diving straight out of a cloudless sky and vanishing beneath me. You don’t see them until they’re about 60 feet above you. By then they’re headed true-straight down, along the side of the bridge roadway and in a swooping turn that’s close to 90 degrees. <> When a larger group appears, it’s really quite unsettling. You’re looking out over the water and through rain-like curtains. Curtains of bats. Some yards out from shore I notice one bat and only one bat, swimming in the lake. Its fate is sealed, I’m certain of that. My instincts tell me that bat-life becomes short when you land in the drink for overshooting hour mark. This predicament will have be revisited.
0643
I lose sight of Jupiter. And if I hadn’t been looking around for that might beneficent light, I doubt that I would have noticed the birds.
0644
Hoards of blackbirds – grackles I guess (is there any other black bird that makes its home in these here parts?) begin leaving a grove of live oak trees near the Town Lake Bell Tower at the north end of the bridge. Hundreds of them fly over, more or less fanning out to the south-southeast. I’m taken aback (by the funny bone) by the sight of but one single bird that’s walking toward me, southward along the sidewalk, methodically feeding on something along the way. I guessed that it was bugs that were dropped by the incoming bats. <> This peculiar sight reminds me instantly of a grackle I once observed crossing in the intersection of 15th and Nueces Streets several years ago during lunch hour rush in wicked August head and well within the crosswalk paint. That queer black bird came a-waddling along on its ne’er-do-well way.
0658
The rain of bats is now at fever pitch. A thousand times ten thousand twice maybe more, raining toward home as several hundred large black birds screech across the bat-storm-strewn path! Whoever coined the “raining cats and dogs” thing had obviously never been witness to the truth behind the fable. Here I was, practically downtown, with no umbrella to protect me from what surely was a storm. It was raining bats and gusting birds. <> 6:58 <> Tick Tock Tick. <> The storm of bats seems to show no sign of abating. But something radical is happening, so things have got to change. The sun has peeked out above the top of some four star hotel. <> 6:59 <>
0700
The first flight out of Mueller Airport lifts its wings and joins the flight of nature. Here, there and everything, along the city sky. The continually raining their way home for only about twenty eight minutes. And still they rain their way back home - even in the increasing light and amidst the increasing activity.
0703
The tower bells begin a tune but I do not know which one. My watch is probably wrong, too.
0705
Suddenly, this day now finds several hundred pigeons coming into the scene, joining so many crisscrossing things now seemingly chaotic everywhere – and every thing, every where is in flight!
1. The black birds (they can’t all be grackles!) continue to fan out to the south, flung in a line that diagonally cuts northwest-to-southeast, dissecting Town Lake and its Avenue Bridge at the square.
2. The pigeons. These things have been arriving from beneath the bridge itself, fluttering up in great, noisy waves, and lashing out from underneath – up – then under – then up once more, then under. Chaotic things, it seems, pigeons. The action here is as when fishermen are tossing out their nets, or as one unfurls a sheet to make the bed.
3. The bats. While this is going on, the bats still rain amidst it all. And not one creature, mammal nor fowl, has yet to bump into another.
0710
The sun is now fully adrift in the skyline, its rays cutting deeply into dawn’s cold skin. And now bit by bit and bat by bat, the activity slows down, slows down. Yet I am not in the least disappointed, for something has my curiosity piqued – and I’m to investigate. I want to learn about the relationship between the bats and those mad-rushing pigeons. I’ll need to get under the bridge, and see it all there for myself. <> I cross over to the steps that take you down next to the Electrical Worker’s Union Hall, and wind my way passed a man sleeping, door open, keys-in-the-ignition. There are piles of junk scattered about, here below the roadway high above. Bits of foam and flotsam left over from this year’s can-you-make-the-dumbest-raft race. <> As soon as I’m under the bridge enough to see it all at once, it’s kinda funny when it’s seen clearly like this: The pigeons had become excited because their own roosting place – their night of silence – was now by bats and sunlight and blackbird grackle flight disturbed. All part of mother nature’s plan. This kind of dawn is something that not even pigeons get used to after a while. I guess.
0720
Looking up into the under works I see that the bats keep house in several narrow stress grooves that run the length of the bridge. These are about five inches wide and eight to twelve inches deep (it’s hard to tell from way down here). The bridge is supported by concrete grid work arches that also run the length of the bridge, occasionally tied to massive concrete pilings. The pigeons roost among the arches. There are probably only 200 or so pigeons versus more than a million bats. The scent of guano permeates the air. It’s everywhere, but not like in piles. It kinda blends into the dusty ground. <> I was more than a little bit apprehensive about walking directly ounder that bridge, in case the bats might be relieving themselves after having spent the night gorging on bugs. So, at first, I watched from a vantage point not quite directly under the span while several hundred remaining bats as they came swooping in from the full morning sun and to the dark safety of their under-bridge urban home. Soon there were so few latecomers that it was pretty easy to track individual bats and watch thelm hunt-and-peck their way to just the right place within those grooves. Some would enter a slot and duck out again before finding their apparently rightful place. Observing this process brought to mind something I heard somewhere – that bats with young will return exactly to the place where last they left those young. Remarkable, considering that in this instance alone there were at least a million bats, each keeping track of their own little niche. All with the help not of eyes but of echo-location. Yikes. With so many hundreds of thousands of bats in place it frequently took two tries for each latecomer to find its own spot.
0728
Sucking up my nerve, I decide to walk under the bridge to the other side. There’s not much space to walk so I had to hug the shore between a pylon and the water. In fact, what little trail there was ended abruptly and I was unable to traverse the whole distance. And just as well, because standing on a rock some ten yards from me was the most stoic and substantial Blue Heron. A gorgeous bird with a nifty little head piece just for grins, I guess. It was standing on a flat rock on the southeast bank of the river/lake and looking intently out at the water. After a minute or two the bird silently lifted off from its rock, gliding straight out over the water but inches from the surface. In less than ten seconds it touched its wonderful beak to the water and circled back into some fairly hefty underbrush, bat firmly in beak. Thus is the fate of the occasional bat who doesn’t quite make that 90 degree turn. <see> And that is probably only one of the many nasty things that can befall a bat that lands in the water. I would guess that more than a few of the little fellers get gobbled up by some of the major turtles that I've seen basking in that murky Town Lake water.
<>As for the heron, I wondered right away if that bird was the very same blue heron I’d seen hanging out on a little crop of land under the railroad bridge a couple of miles west of the bridge. It was Independence Day 1987 and I had the good fortune of sharing a canoe with Marco and Diane Perella. We’d just finished off the fireworks at Auditorium Shores and were rather feverishly rowing upstream to catch a second fireworks climax at a Jaycees event in Zilker Park (Beach Boys). And there in the middle of Town Lake I spotted a blue heron. I heard a woman whisper from another canoe, “did you see the blue heron?” and a moment later I managed to maneuver our boat broadside into another canoe that was manned by none olther than Dave Pfister who’d been a neighbor some eight years back (we lived in Beula Skinner’s rental unit at 17th and Nueces – this arrangement comes up in the Austin part one chapter which hasn’t been drafted.). Yes, with all those canoers jostling northward against the current I managed to bump into a person I knew. I’m guessing that the 1987 heron was a least related to the one I saw in 1988.<>
0730
Now there's too much sun for me, too. I didn't hate the sun back then, like I do now. Back then it only meant the day was breaking and that my drugs were either wearing off or aching to be re-lit. The bats were all home (except that one from the drink) and doing their Honey-I'm-Home thing I guess. So I might as well head home myself, having accomplished my goal of watching the bats as they return from the forage. Walking away from it now - thinking about what I'd experienced. Examining the ground beneath the bridge to see if any bats had fallen (none to be found). I generally avoid "nature romps" and hike-and-bike trails, but, honestly, such a trail was really my best option for getting home directly. So I amble along the Hyatt Regency's portion of the hike-and-bike thing, becoming achingly aware that there are people moving about. Too many of them. It’s definitely time to find shelter.
I distract myself by wishing I’d brought along a note pad and pen. I've been outlining events and keeping track of the time in my head. I've probably been awake for two days, at least.
Soon I round the corner of the Hyatt patio walk and I see three ducks. Or are they geese. Anyway, three duck-like, geese-like things, in disarray close to some fenced-in bushes. One of the creatures has its head between slats in the fence – not caught – just head-between slats. I guess it’s a girl-duck and the other two fowl are most likely boy-ducks because both of them are trying to mount Daisy. They’re both on top of her really – kind of like two guys straddling a Volkswagen. They’re biting at her neck and humping, humping, desperately humping. The males soon give up and climb down from Ms. Quacks (or Ms. Honks). And at the instant they do, the larger of the males leaves a dollop of what I took to be duck-or-goose semen on the lawn. The female hurries on her way but the males follow and are soon joined by a third duck-like creature that really is a goose of some kind. But this goose only just happens to be in the area and is not really interested in duck-humping just now. He heads for the river instead, and nibbles at some grasses hugging the shore. I lose track of the threesome. I'm on my way home now. That's all I am doing.
Three large swans paddle in from around a cove and chomp the same grass. I see a couple of goldfish sleeping (if goldfish sleep) by a leafy log floating in the water, and in an adjoining mini-cove there float several empty plastic medicine containers (Excedrin type jars, dandruff shampoo type containers), a great deal of Styrofoam and other such crap that people either toss into the river or toss onto the street where the stuff is taken in by the drainage system and empties into the lake.
0757
A jogger runs toward me. I smile and she frowns. I'd better get home before I get run out of town by the after-church crowd.
Bat Conservation International
From A Reader: Hi Chris,
I am really enjoying reading your webpages. I wish I had time to do something like that as well. I just read “After School”. I really enjoy your creativity.
I am a member of the BCI (Bat Conservation International) as well. I saw your bats page and that is what got me reading your stories in more depth.
I used to help on the University Bat Census we had every January for 5 decades. I teach part time at Saint Cloud State and when I was a student here I stumbled on this from ads in the biology department. I thought it would be a great thing to take my three kids on. They of course all loved it. My daughter Jennifer was the youngest girl ever to go on this. She was 3 ½ when she did her first one. My sons Jason and Patrick, were 5 and 10 years old. We would go into the storm sewer under a few streets near our Lake George.
It had a small leak and provided the water source hibernating bats needed to survive the winter up here. It kept the deeper parts of the sewer from freezing. We would collect the bats, bring them to the lab, weigh them, determine the sex, band them and return them to the hibernaculum. We only got Big Brown Bats (Eptesicus fuscus) in that location. A big one wasn’t really big…weighed the same as a quarter if it was a large female….25 grams.
I did it from 1979 until the city fixed the leak in 1991…the bats then moved on the a better location. It ended nearly 50 years of collecting data. We found the last year the oldest E. fuscus ever. She was a robust 20 years old.
Barry Kazmer - October 2009
