Austin, Texas has one of the most unusual and fascinating tourist attractions anywhere. Austin is home to the largest urban colony of Mexican free-tail bats in North America. Each night as the sun sets the 1.5 million bats emerge from under the Congress Avenue Bridge as hundreds of people line up on the bridge to see this spectacular site. The bats migrate each spring from central Mexico. Most of the colony is female, and in early June each one gives birth to a single baby bat, called a pup. The bats are welcome in Austin and actually generate more than 10 million dollars in tourist revenue each year. They eat more than 20,000 pounds of insects each night making Austin a great place to live. Bat Conservation International (BCI) has been instrumental in protecting and promoting the now famous Congress Avenue Bridge bat colony as an eco-tourism destination. We have been to the bridge on many nights and never tire of seeing this spectacular site.
a sculpture dedicated to the bats located on Congress Avenue
