Saturday morning (also St. Patrick's Day) I was out on the hike and bike trail at Lady Bird Lake by the Austin American Statesman building. Why? For more Docent training yay! 
Congress Avenue Bridge is home to hundreds of thousands of teensy Mexican Free Tailed Bats. In the evenings they all swoop out and fly east to nom on tons of tasty moths and bugs up to 60 miles away. SWOOOOOP! I can't wait to see it!
There is a lovely grassy area you can sit on and watch the bats or you can watch them up on the bridge. BCI has informational signs and a kiosk for people that visit when a Docent isn't there. I'm looking forward to talking to people about Bat Conservation really soon.
The bats live under the entire span of the bridge that goes across Lady Bird Lake. Per the informational sign above, you can see that the bats live up inside the cement portions of the bridge. It is a warm place because the heat of the sun beating on the roads gets stored in the cement and it is a safe place up away from predators. They have their babies in there later in the summer and the bat colony practically doubles. Eat all the bugs in Austin little bat friends!
I can go out and start talking to the public now using my BCI name tag, but soon we'll get a schedule of days to be out there in the evening and also t-shirts letting people know that they can ask us about bats.
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