Bracken Bat Cave(near Garden Ridge)

Through Lindeheimer Master Naturalist, Sally and I got the opportunity to accompany a Texas State professor and her students to visit Bracken Cave which is home to the world's largest bat colony...estimated to be 20,000,000 bats.  We heard a lot of interesting bat facts and I think that the one that fascinated me the most was that they can eat their body weight in flying insects every night... that means that this bat colony can eat approximately 300 tons of insects in just one night.

The thousands of little blurs coming out of the cave opening are the bats pouring out of the cave just before sunset.

There is a definite oder to this cave due to the large quanity of bat guano produced by so many bats.

Once the bats reach altitude(above the surrounding trees), they started breaking off into groups of a few thousand each. Most groups seemed to be headed south. We learned that this time of year they are headed for the corn crops around Corpus Christi where they are a big help to the farmers by feeding on the corn-ear moth. The bats will return to their cave before sunrise the next day.