style · Sep 22, 2026 · DAILY TRANSMISSION
Urbana Is Throwing a Costume Party for the Night Shift
The Central Illinois Bat Festival turns backyard bugs, bat calls, and a patch of dark sky into one very good public hang.
The sky is the stage. The bats did not ask for this.
Picture Crystal Lake Park after sunset: costumes, pointing fingers, and a crowd listening hard at the dark. Somewhere above them, bats are hunting insects as usual. The humans, meanwhile, are having a tiny civic meltdown about it.
That is the excellent premise behind Urbana’s third annual Central Illinois Bat Festival, happening Saturday, September 26, 2026. It is free, requires no registration, and carries the gloriously specific theme “Backyard Bugs and Bats.”
The party starts from 1 to 4 p.m. at Anita Purves Nature Center. Then it shifts to Crystal Lake Park from 5:30 to 8 p.m. for costumes, bat-spotting, and a guided acoustic walk.
First: art, snacks, face paint, tiny bug drama
The daytime event has exhibits, guest speakers, conservation information, vendors, food trucks, face painting, and activities. It also has art made by local people for the Backyard Bugs & Bats art contest. That work will be displayed at Anita Purves on festival day.
This is not a dusty lecture with one sad folding table. The University of Illinois calendar lists it as an Urbana Park District program originating with Illinois Natural History Survey programming. In other words, science is present, but it has agreed to wear party shoes.
The crowd may be substantial. Urbana Park District says last year’s festival drew more than 1,000 people. Organizers think this year could meet or beat that number.
Then the invisible concert begins
At night, the festival’s main act is a creature most people barely notice. Bats use echolocation, which means they send out high-frequency calls and listen for returning echoes. Those echoes help them navigate and find insect prey.
Most of those calls sit above human hearing. Specialized microphones and software can record them, then turn them into sounds or visible signals people can notice. When a bat locks onto an insect, its calls can speed into a rapid “feeding buzz.”
So the acoustic walk has a funny, thrilling setup. The performers will not walk onstage. They will not acknowledge the audience. A detector may catch a pulse, somebody may point upward, and suddenly an ordinary insect hunt becomes the evening’s biggest reveal.
Wildlife science, with capes if you want
The costume contest keeps the whole thing from acting too precious. You can learn about a wild animal without pretending it needs to be your fuzzy best friend. Sometimes respect looks like paying attention, asking good questions, and showing up dressed as a moth.
The festival also connects to work already happening around Champaign-Urbana. Researchers with the Champaign-Urbana Bat Survey have placed acoustic detectors on trees in local parks and streets. They use recorded high-frequency calls to measure bat activity and identify species in the area.
Illinois Extension has also reported that volunteer acoustic surveys in other parts of the state add data to the Illinois Bat Conservation Program. That gives the evening a nice extra charge. The weird beeps in the park belong to a much larger effort to notice who shares our neighborhoods.
Fall’s stranger little ritual
September has no shortage of familiar public rituals. There are harvest fairs, pumpkins, and the early rumble of Halloween. Urbana is offering another option: go outside with your neighbors and root for the animals working the late shift.
The festival’s clever move is turning translation into a group activity. Art turns bugs and bats into images. Technology turns ultrasound into something people can hear or see. Costumes turn a science gathering into a social scene with room for nonsense.
The bats remain completely wild through all of this. They will keep chasing insects whether the crowd is there or not. But for one evening, a park full of humans can look up, hear a hidden buzz, and realize the dark is busy as hell.
SOURCES FROM THIS TRANSMISSION
General Events ↗Volunteer with Us ↗Champaign County Forest Preserve District > About > News & Events > Events > Event Details ↗Echolocation - Bats (U.S. National Park Service) ↗The Champaign-Urbana Bat Survey – Human-Wildlife Interactions ↗