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Bat Viewing

Everything You Need to Know About Watching Bats in Downtown Austin

When most people think of Austin, visions of tasty tacos and musicians performing all over town come to mind. But the city is also known for its love of certain winged nocturnal animals that appear at sunset. Yep, those are the Mexican Free-Tailed Bats.  

A 1980 renovation transformed the Congress Avenue Bridge into an ideal bat cave, soon attracting migrating Mexican free-tailed bats. Decades later, Austin's bat numbers have swelled. And locals have adopted the beloved creatures as neighbors who happily handle the city's bug mitigation and provide an amazing nightly show.

The best time to see the bats is around sunset, but the nightly show can occur anytime from 7:30 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. It can take as long as 45 minutes for all of the bats to exit the bridge for the night. Plan to arrive early to find parking and secure your spot.

Austin's resident bats are Mexican free-tailed bats, which migrate each spring from central Mexico to roosts across the southwestern U.S.

On their nightly flights, the bats eat anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of insects, including mosquitoes and harmful agricultural pests.

Austin's bats are almost all female! In early June, each bat gives birth to one single baby bat (known as a pup). It takes about five weeks after birth for the pups to learn to fly and hunt insects on their own. In the meantime, the mommy bats nurse their babies and each can locate her own pup among the thousands under the bridge.

At the end of the season, you can see roughly 1.5 million bats ascending into the summer sky.