More bats than I've ever seen before
Posted: Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:13 am
Howdy y'all, I just got back from a visit to central Texas. While I was there, I had the opportunity to visit a major bat colony at dusk just as they emerged for the night. I was at the Old Tunnel Wildlife Management Area in Fredericksburg Texas, where there were 2.5 million Mexican Free-tailed bats roosting. I took some video of the emergence, and put it on YouTube:
The bats came out in an incredible stream, I stayed for about a half hour until it became too dark to see. I was about 50 feet from the side of the old train tunnel, the bats came out at one point at about 1000 per second. They flew to the treeline, spiraled upwards, and then flew off. From where I was it looked like a bat tornado. The sound of the wings was incredible, as was the overpowering smell of ammonia! Many bats broke from the main group and flew around our viewing area nearly close enough to touch. We could hear many bat vocalizations as well.
Sorry for the video quality, it was getting quite dark. I see several other videos on YouTube of the same thing, search for Old Tunnel or Bat Emergence if you would like to see more of what I saw.
The bats came out in an incredible stream, I stayed for about a half hour until it became too dark to see. I was about 50 feet from the side of the old train tunnel, the bats came out at one point at about 1000 per second. They flew to the treeline, spiraled upwards, and then flew off. From where I was it looked like a bat tornado. The sound of the wings was incredible, as was the overpowering smell of ammonia! Many bats broke from the main group and flew around our viewing area nearly close enough to touch. We could hear many bat vocalizations as well.
Sorry for the video quality, it was getting quite dark. I see several other videos on YouTube of the same thing, search for Old Tunnel or Bat Emergence if you would like to see more of what I saw.
