Bats
Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge is home to the world's largest urban bat colony which is composed of Mexican free-tailed bats. The bats reside beneath the road deck in gaps between the concrete component structures. They are migratory, spending their summers in Austin and the winters in Mexico. According to Bat Conservation International, between 750,000 and 1.5 million bats reside underneath the bridge each summer. Since Austin's human population is about 750,000, there are more bats than people in Austin during summer.
The nightly emergence of the bats from underneath the bridge at dusk, and their flight across Lady Bird Lake primarily to the east, to feed themselves, attracts as many as 100,000 tourists annually. Tourists can see the bats from the bridge, from the sides of the river and from boats.
A study made in 1999 by Dr. Gail R. Ryser and Roxana Popovici concludes that the economic impact of the bats to Austin city is $7.9 million each year. Today, businesses are using the bats as a symbol for Austin.
A project, called "Bats and Bridges", has been put in place by the Texas Department of Transportation, in cooperation with BCI, to study the best way to make bridges habitable for bats.
The Austin Ice Bats minor-league hockey team was named in honor of the bridge's bats.
The song "Bats" by Kimya Dawson and rapper Aesop Rock was inspired by the immense number of bats that reside under the bridge.
Read more about this topic: Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge
Famous quotes containing the word bats:
“A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“While I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,
My heart would brim with dreams about the times
When we bent down above the fading coals
And talked of the dark folk who live in souls
Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
and cannot be arrested and pay no tax
and, in general, bats have it made.”
—John Berryman (1914–1972)