Things get batty at Devil's Sinkhole Watch as millions of bats retreat into the depths of Devil's Sinkhole each morning, emerge each night
By _Pam LeBlanc_ (http://www.statesman.com/life/travel/things-get-batty-at-devils-sinkhole-821394.html?service=popup&authorContact=821394&authorContact Field=0) AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Published: 2:19 p.m. Saturday, July 24, 2010 Fist-sized mammals are zinging past me from all sides, dive-bombing into a gaping sinkhole punched into the parched landscape three hours southwest of Austin. It's not quite dawn, and the Mexican free-tailed bats are coming home after a night of gorging. I know bats are designed for night flight, but it still feels like I'll be thwacked in the head if I stand up straight. Instead, I'm crouched on a platform that extends over the side of the crater, which plunges to nearly 400 feet at its deepest point. The musty aroma of bat guano hangs in the air. I'm here with my friend Marcy Stell-fox and two representatives of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. We're the only ones at this state natural area, six miles from Rocksprings. We arrived last night, set up camp and ate dinner before walking over to the sinkhole to watch bats leave for the evening. We had company for that show. About 30 tourists who boarded a bus at the Rocksprings Visitors Center gathered around the sinkhole with us, oohing and aahing as the stream of bats whirled counterclockwise out of the hole in the ground a little after 9 p.m. A fat owl, looking to grab an airborne snack, sat on a ledge inside the sinkhole watching the proceedings, too. "I have always wanted more people to see it," said Carolyn Anderson, a representative of the Friends of the Devil's Sinkhole who led the evening tour. She grew up in the area and remembers riding here on horseback as a child. "It's indescribable. You wouldn't believe in this old dry country that these creatures are all around us," she told us. The night performance was good, but this dawn show is spectacular. We staggered out of our tents and onto the viewing platform at 5:30 a.m. We noticed the sound first — a "voop, voop" that reminded me of millions of tiny umbrellas opening in a stiff wind. Now the tiny caped crusaders are zooming in from all points. "It's like it's raining bats," Stellfox says as the bat storm picks up. The creatures blaze past like shooting stars, slamming on the brakes as they enter the sinkhole's opening, which measures 60 feet by 40 feet. "Home, boys!" chuckles David Riskind, director of the natural resources program for Texas Parks and Wildlife. "Full bat speed!" By 6:20 a.m., it's all but over for the bats. A few stragglers zip in, but that flapping plastic sound is fading. Scientists, who climbed into the hole and measured the piles of bat waste, or guano, at the bottom, estimate that about 3 million of the insect-munching machines spend part of the year here. The best time to watch their flight is summer, when they cling beneath the limestone ledges in the sinkhole by day and dart out into the night to gobble up a diet of mostly moths by night. The colony is larger than the one underneath the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, where an estimated 1.5 million bats live. Unlike the Austin colony, which is considered the largest urban bat colony in North America, this one isn't a maternal group. It gets too cold in the depths of the sinkhole for mothers to raise babies. Researchers have uncovered some interesting history about the site. Graffiti dating to the 1880s is carved into rock at the bottom of the cave. An early survey of the vertical cave, done in 1899, noted bats living in the sinkhole, and mentioned honeycombs at its entrance and a bear skull at the bottom. In the 1920s and early 1930s, men climbed down rickety ladders to mine the guano, which was used to make fertilizer and explosives. In the 1940s, U.S. soldiers captured bats, scheming to use them to deliver bombs to Japan during World War II. The project was scrapped before any bats were sent into battle. The Devil's Sinkhole site, formerly part of the Whitworth Ranch, was named a National Natural Landmark in 1972. Texas Parks and Wildlife acquired the sinkhole, once known as Hell Hole, and 1,860 surrounding acres in 1985. It was opened to limited access in 1992. Besides bats, the park is also home to an endangered bird, the black-capped vireo, and an endangered plant, the toe bush fishhook cactus. Today the property is open to the public for guided tours by reservation. The Devil's Sinkhole Society offers daytime nature and birding; evening tours coincide with bat flights. Still perched on the edge of the sinkhole, we peer into the sky, now streaked with pink and blue. As the sun rises, the bats disappear. Still, the action's not quite over. The flap of the bats' wings is gradually replaced with a new sound — chirping. Soon, thousands of cave swallows, awakened by the return of the bats, take over, swirling in and out of the mouth of the sinkhole. Time for the shift change. If you go ... Bat tours are offered Wednesday through Sunday evenings from May 1 to mid-October; $12 adults, $10 seniors, $6 children, free for age 4 and younger. Morning nature and birding walks are offered the first and third Saturday of each month; $6 per person, must be 10 or older. All tours begin at the Rocksprings Visitors Center, 101 N. Sweeten St. in Rocksprings. For reservations, call 830-683-2287. For more information, go to _www.devilssinkhole.org_ (http://www.devilssinkhole.org) _http://www.statesman.com/life/travel/things-get-batty-at-devils-sinkhole-82 1394.html_ (http://www.statesman.com/life/travel/things-get-batty-at-devils-sinkhole-821394.html)
