As promised, here is a short clip showing the stream of bats that comes out at dusk in downtown Austin.
Please forgive the shaky, jumpy camera moves – this was shot with my tiny Sony W90 camera – about the size of a deck of cards. Still, like I tell all my students, “the best camera in the world is the one that you have with you when the picture happens.”
The bats just kept streaming past for at least 10 minutes. It was very impressive – I thought it was going to be a nice flock coming out, but there were tens of thousands of the critters all taking wing at the same time, staying in formation and chittering to each other on their way to work. One girl in a wedding dress drawled, “Ah hope they’re all on their way to eat all the damn skeeters outta my back yard.”
I’ve seen things like this in the Planet Earth video series from the BBC; I was wondering if there were going to be hawks loitering about, looking for a late-afternoon snack. No such luck – and considering how Austin has Disneyfied itself in the last 15 years, I guess I was lucky that there wasn’t some kind of 3D Laserium “Dark Knight II” promo tie-in.