Hill Country bat colony puts on a wild show

From Star-Telegram, Septempber 7, 2008...

You’re standing just an arm’s length away, so the breeze generated by the beating wings is the first thing to startle you as the waves of little brown creatures begin careening into the waning daylight.

We have come to the Old Tunnel Wildlife Management Area, about a dozen miles from town up an undulating Hill Country road, to see the nightly emergence of Brazilian Free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis), a Milky Way of bats, 3 million of them pouring in a thick, fluttering stream into the deep-blue evening. These are the same species of migratory bats, often called Mexican Free-tailed bats, that swarm out from under Austin’s Congress Avenue Bridge, but watching them take wing in the limestone hills, from a much closer perch, makes for a far more sublime nature experience.

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