Bat Flight at Bracken Cave

Millions of Mexican free-tailed bats swirl in an ever-rising vortex before me. Their wing-beats sound less like flapping and more like the steady thrum of rain on rooftops. Beyond spectacular, the moment feels celebratory. I sit in awe. The emergence, from the mouth of a cave deep within a sinkhole, will take more than three hours.

This is the largest bat colony in the world. The two-chambered cave sits within a preserve on the northeastern edge of San Antonio, less than thirty minutes from my house. Bat mothers migrate from Mexico every March to have their babies here, one pup per female, and they stay until October. Bracken is a maternal colony. The males form bachelor colonies, like the one at Devil's Sinkhole in Rocksprings, Texas.

Soon whispers of an approaching thunderhead float across the small gathering. There is an energy in the air tonight that holds me in the moment, dreamlike. By the time I leave, flashes of lightening illuminate the purple-black sky. I roll down the window to hear the rumble of thunder. Everything is unusually still or maybe I sense the absence of fluttering bat wings, something I never knew before.

Bat flights begin during the golden hour, the time before sunset when colors take on a soft, glowing hue, and time flows like honey. Twilight. I have always loved this time. Now I have one more reason to pause when the colors of the sky begin to change: to wish the bats well on their journey.