The sun taught me a lesson yesterday, so today’s walk was after sunset. The highlight of three hours of trudging was something I stumbled across by chance. I was busy crossing a bridge. The bridge was busy crossing the Colorado River. People were crowded around the edge of the bridge keeping their camera flashes busy. They would point, and in the gloom and flashes below the bridge, there would be darting flashes of brown.
It was hard to see at first, but then if you looked along the edges of the trees below the bridge you could make out the motion. Fleeting glimpses of colour against the green leaves all spewing forth in the same direction. I found a path down to the trees below, and stood under a tree and looked at the flashes coming towards me. Bats. Bats flying dangerously close to the top of my head. I stooped a little and found an information post. Living under the bridge is the world’s largest urban bat colony. Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of bats nested there. They stream out to feed nightly on a ton and a half of insects. I should get some for my tent when I go camping.