Puget Sound's biggest bat colony could be big loser of dam-removal project

As dusk deepens over Woodard Bay, a couple dozen adults and children gather on the south Puget Sound shoreline to wait for a fluttery spectacle: thousands of bats emerging from their roosts for the night.

Tiny bats gradually appear a handful at a time, barely visible in the gloom, darting erratically over the water and startlingly close to the visitors.

“One just went right through us!” a child shouts.

“Bat!” another shouts. “One just flew over your head!”

“More and more folks have been showing up. It's become a thing,” said bat biologist Greg Falxa of Olympia.

Each summer, pregnant bats gather just offshore at Woodard Bay, where they give birth and nurse little winged pups while hanging from the remnants of an abandoned Weyerhaeuser Company pier, now owned by the Washington Department of Natural Resources.