6th Annual Bat Fest on Congress bridge

Every year Roadway Events puts up their annual Bat Fest downtown Austin directly where the bats depart nightly from the Congress bridge. If you haven't been to the Congress bridge in the summer to see over 750,000 Mexican bats, mostly female, and their pups fly off in search for food (insects and mosquitos).  The best time to watch the bats are now (late August) when those pups join their mothers. Throughtout the rest of the summer the female bats take the trek north to south to their home under the Congress bridge but the amount of bats is minimal compared to what you could see tonight.

This year Bat Fest turns 6 years old and cnsidering the bats usually take flight around 8:00 - 8:30pm, the festival allows you to enjoy over 75 booths of artisans that sell their crafts to food vendors cooking up local food and has 2 stages of bands to showcase their music.  The festival goes until 12am midnight and is completely FREE so no excuse to not g out and see both the bats and music.

KLBJ stage kicks off their music line-up with Dara Niemi followed by Charlie Hurtin & The Hecklers (a musician I met first time at the Buddy Holly auditions in March of this year) and later on at night Vallejo and Fastball. Schedule here.

The 101X stage will showcase Alex Marley and The Raspas (apparently playing Bob Marley songs), The Black and White Years, The Solider Thread and Adema throughout the late evening and into the night.

I plan on catching Charlie Hurtin and The Hecklers, Alex Marley and The Raspas, and skip The Black and White Years to see the bats, and end up at The Solider Thread.