If you haven’t gone to see the bats, please let me convince you to go see the bats.
I love a long hike in the mountains, as well as a bushwhack to find a remote spring. Although they take time and resources, each is wonderful and makes me fall more in love with our planet.
But here’s what else is wonderful (and easier): grabbing some snacks and a blanket, hopping into your car or onto a free city bus or your bike, and setting up shop near one of Tucson’s bat bridges to watch tens of thousands of strange, tiny animals tumbling into the sky.
Do you know about the bats?
Every year, Mexican free-tailed bats — also known as Brazilian free-tailed bats because of their widespread distribution throughout the Americas, including Brazil — migrate to our area by the millions and roost in bridges around town, as well as in caves and abandoned mines in the mountains. Every night in the summertime, roughly from April to October, the bats begin swooping underneath the bridge usually around sunset. Slowly, in small numbers, one or two. Then 10 or 20. Back and forth they go. At some point some change occurs beyond our perceiving, and the bats fly out by the tens of thousands, a steady stream into the sky. This stream could last ten minutes or an hour. Who’s to say how long it will be tonight? Only the bats, and they keep their secrets.
Every time I see the bats, I have so many questions. I wonder: How do they decide it’s time to come out? Do they come out in roughly the same order every night? Are their babies flying with them yet? Why is the bat stream so short some nights and so long other nights? Do they welcome other species of bat into the inner circles, or must those other bats roost on the margins of the big free-tailed bat colony? How do the bats decide which direction to emerge? Isn’t it wonderful that some things are simply beyond our knowing?
If you want some wonderful nature viewing but don’t have quite enough time to make it into the mountains, set aside an evening, bring a friend or another loved one along with some food, and head to one of the bat bridges before dusk. It’s recommended to keep a safe distance from the bats, for their
Thanks to our friends at Watershed Management Group for hosting a bat night recently and for working so hard to make sure bats and other creatures have healthy habitat in Tucson. And thanks to all our volunteers using Spring Seeker, which helps us figure out how to keep water sources happy across the Sky Islands for the 20+ bat species that live in or migrate through this area. If you do go visit the bats, send