A winter home to the Whooping Crane.
Aransas NWR is on the Blackjack peninsula, along the Texas Gulf Coast. The Blackjack peninsula started out life as a barrier island during the Pleistocene era and then river sediment filled in the connection to the mainland. The peninsula is now protected by a chain of "new" barrier islands, in particular Matagorda Island, which is also home to a sister wildlife refuge. Matagorda island was formed only in the last 5,000 years.
From the salt water shore to the fresh water ponds inland, the marshy wetlands of the peninsula gradually shift in salinity. The only wild flock of Whooping Cranes in North America call the salty marshes of Aransas their winter home. The Whooping Cranes are one of the primary reasons this area is protected as an NWR. Overall, the avian class is a clear winner in this park. Aransas NWR is home to more than 400 species of birds. The inland freshwater areas also provide a habitat for alligators, turtles, frogs, and snakes. Further inland are oak savannas and low sandy prairie, which support a variety of mammals.
Many migrating birds winter at the Gulf Coast. It’s one of my motivations for our Gulf Coast camping trip tradition during winter break. However, we ended up visiting Aransas NWR on one of our spring camping trips this past year. Fortunately, some of the migrating birds hadn’t left yet.
The wide-ranging ecosystems in the refuge can be accessed via a number of relatively short hiking trails. Several observation towers overlook broad expanses of the park that are not developed for human visitors. Also, there is a 16-mile auto tour. I’d favor the first two if you are short on time. The park was hit hard by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. When we visited, the visitor’s center was still in a portable, but otherwise the park features were intact.
Most state and national parks have some sort of junior ranger type program that will get your kids looking for animals and animal tracks. I'm not sure anyone can rival a preschooler's excitement in starting an activity, but elementary school kids seem more motivated to complete their "training". We only do them sporadically, but this trip was one such occasion. Armed with our Junior Wildlife Refuge Manager (say that 5 times fast) checklist, we headed out to see how many different animals and animal tracks we could find. Herons, egrets and cranes, oh my!
Actually, egrets are herons, and (in case you wanted to know) you can tell the difference from cranes by whether they fly with their necks in an ‘S’ shape. We also got to check off gators many times over, along with ducks, and super noisy frogs. A pair of Whooping Cranes were way off in the distance. At 5 feet in height and with a 7-foot wingspan, we could see them by eye, but the viewing was a lot better with binoculars. I'm pretty sure I also saw an anhinga drying it's wings. They do a lot of that.
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