Waugh Bridge Bat Colony
July 18th, 2006 by James
That’s a few bats!!!
I went down to the bat colony at Waugh and Allen Parkway tonight for the first time and it was an amazing experience. I’m told that this is the second biggest urban bat colony in TX and I’d believe it. Tonight, the bats started flying about 8:15 and were really going by 8:30. I can’t even begin to estimate how many bats live there but it’s probably in the thousands.
Click on a photo to see the larger images. These were not the easiest photos to take as I had to risk getting shat upon, and I had to manually focus the camera about where I expected the bats to be. At least I had the right equipment. I took these with a 70-300 lens w/ image stabilization at 1/200th. Thanks to my friend Patricia for telling me about the colony, and the best time to see them.
[update] I’ve recently learned that flash photography can disorient bats and cause them to crash into objects or people. At least that’s what I’ve heard - my flash thankfully did not have this effect - this is one reason that bat photography has been banned at the Congress Street bridge in Austin
August 21st, 2006 at 10:54 am
do you happen to know the species name?
it seems like they belong to the family of freetail bats (molossidae)…
August 21st, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Hi Markus,
I haven’t done much research RE these bats. I bet you can find out if you do a search of the local bat species types.
James
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:22 am
oh, you’re right - this page says they’re mexican free-tailed bats…
February 13th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Hi James,
I am the outreach/volunteer director for Buffalo Bayou Partnership in Houston. We love your photos! Would you mind if we use them in our website/e-newsletter? We would give you photpgrapher credit of course.
Thanks!
Bethany