Taking the Bat Tour boat trip in Austin

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One of the more famous tourist attractions in Austin, Texas is to see the Mexican free-tail bats that live underneath the Congress Avenue bridge over Lady Bird Lake and emerge each evening for their feeding frenzy.

This particular bridge has grooves under the roadway to help it to expand in the Texas summer heat and those are perfect for nests for these bats and as a result, the colony has grown to around 1.5 million bats.

They are present from March through October each year, but the best shows occur in the spring and then in late July and August as the pups are able to fly out for food. Each evening around sunset they fly east to feed and can eat up to 30,000 pounds of insects before they return in the early morning hours before sunrise. After a prolonged drought, they often fly out before the sun finally sets as they have many miles to cover to find enough food.

You can, of course, see the bats from the bridge itself, but the better option is to take a boat tour that ends with one of the best views of the bats emerging into the night sky.

The boats leave from the waterfront alongside the Hyatt Regency Hotel and make their way slowly to the west under the power of their small electric motors.

On a calm evening the sights along the river can be fascinating and the driver/captain of the boat does a great job explaining just what we are seeing as we float among the more energetic people on the water.

This sail like building, known as Block 185, was built for Google and opened in 2020 just as most people started working from home. Dramatic in its design, it is said to be almost empty for most of the time.

Next, we see the fascinating design of Austin’s Central Library, with the equally interesting Independent tower which was built as an upmarket residential block.

The Independent looks to me like the Jenga game where you pull out blocks of wood from a stack avoiding its collapse. The fenced area at the top holds a massive water tank which was added later to avoid the building swaying too much in the Austin storms.

By now the sun is getting much closer to the horizon (if you are lucky to get a partly cloudy evening) and we approach the historic railroad bridge and the Pfluger pedestrian bridge with the famous Lamar Boulevard bridge behind. A lovely part of the boat trip, especially with this golden light reflecting on the river.

As we turned to make our way back to the bats, this scene greeted us.

And, as luck would have it, behind us an empty freight train started to make its way across the railroad bridge, giving us a perfect sunset view of the bridges again.

On the riverbank we passed a tree full of snowy egret birds, but the close up does make me wonder just what the birds are doing on those branches!

And, speaking of birds, our guide pointed out the resemblance of the Frost Tower to the head of an owl looking down on the city.

I can’t believe it has taken me so long to get to this point, but finally we glided underneath the Congress bridge to take up our position for the bats to emerge. It was a humid night and there had been rain, and so we expected an emergence after sunset, but the views waiting for the bats were breathtaking.

And they did emerge, flying to the south along the bridge.

And I got the “money shot” – a perfect composition of the bats emerging from the bridge with a distinctive part of the Austin skyline.

It would be hard to beat that, but in floating back to the dock, this lovely view of the Austin skyline appeared, which made a perfect end to a fantastic tour.

If you are interested in my other articles about Austin and Texas, you will find them here.