Daniela Scillieri: The Congress Bridge Bats

Daniela Scillieri has lived in Austin, Texas, long enough to know all of the major attractions the city has to offer, and also the lesser-known attractions that are off the beaten path. So when she is visited by friends or family, she is able to show them some remarkable things around town.

One of the most remarkable sites is the bats that live along Congress Avenue. Every spring, Daniela Scillieri tells her guests, thousands of mostly female, pregnant Mexican free-tailed bats migrate north to Austin. She says they're a little bit like the swallows that return to the Mission San Juan Capistrano in California.

When they're in Austin, Daniela Scillieri says, the Mexican free-tailed bats live under the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge downtown. Estimates put the number of bats as between 750,000 and 1.5 million. They usually begin arriving in March, and they stay through the summer and into the fall.

Every evening during the summer, which Daniela Scillieri calls the bat-watching season, the bats fly from under the bridge in search of food. Daniela tells her friends there is nothing for humans to fear, because the bats are looking for insects. Experts say that the bats consume from ten to thirty thousand pounds of bugs, every single night.

The bats, which constitute the largest urban colony of bats anywhere in North America, fly from under the bridge like an enormous black cloud. While Daniela Scillieri says there is nothing for humans to fear, it is not a sight for the faint of heart.