A Day at The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, 2018

I attended a lecture on the effects of Hurricane Harvey on local fish, and basically found out that there were twice as many fish as last year. The hurricane didn’t make the fish magically multiply but did keep the angling pressure down, by a factor of ten. If you are not catching fish, it’s your problem!

At the lecture the fisheries biologist talked about the surge and showed that the surge reached a height of over twelve feet at the wildlife refuge. The next day was too windy to kayak and so we decided to drive to the refuge for a day of birding and take along a picnic lunch.

Arriving at the refuge, we checked in at the temporary headquarters, (the headquarters and museum while looking ok on the outside were destroyed by the hurricane). The surge did not destroy the roads and trails but did cause a tremendous loss of trees and brush. So much so that the refuge’s vegetation has opened up, and you can see many of the deer and feral hogs.

Passing Heron Flats, we saw small herds of deer and after arriving at Jones Lake we discovered that the lake was now full.

Lesser scaup, blue winged teal and American coot were the main species and of course several large alligators made their presence known.

Across the lake three feral hogs fed and their rooting evidence is everywhere, (we always remember when Connie and Gary visited us, and

Gary attempted to call the feral hogs, we have never seen hogs run so fast).

We next drove to the observation tower. Both towers survived the hurricane and surge and were open.

However, many of the surrounding live oaks were toppled by the water and wind and all lost their leaves in the one hundred and forty mile per hour winds. Luckily a substantial number did flush again with new leaves!

Climbing the highest tower, we really had to glass awhile before we finally spotted three whooping cranes. They were about as far away from us as they could possibly be, and of course we didn’t have our spotting scope, (at least I got an image of Renita and Pam).

Turkey vultures were everywhere, and we did see some immature white ibis, but the image of the far away whoopers looks like three small dots.

Turning down the eleven-mile, one-way trail, by. we passed lots of white tail deer and more feral hogs. There were lots of evidence of large controlled burns, which were set after the hurricane passed.

There had been reports of whoopers along the road, but we only saw great and lesser egrets.

Walking into the Oaks Sanctuary we were swarmed by mosquitos, which usually happens, and we reached the beach edge to see a beach that didn’t look much difference then normal.

A large live oak did however show effects of the wind and you can see why they are so important in providing protection.

We lunched at the usual picnic area, where a tremendous downfall of trees had occurred. The fishing pier was undamaged, or at least repaired, and it didn’t look any worse for the wear from the high winds and surge.

Heron Flats was also open, but there weren’t many birds around. Three American white ibis fed among the salt marsh, and we saw as many alligators as we did birds. We tried walking down the trail, but the mosquitos were able to find shelter from the wind and they quickly drove us back to the truck.

Our last stop was at the alligator lookout and sure enough there were two alligators. One woke up and swam ashore before staring at us as if to beg for food. Its behavior was much like the fed alligators we found at many stops in the Everglades. A fed gator is a dead gator, so I don’t think this gator is long for the world.

It was windy drive home but at last it has warmed up. The wind keeps us from kayaking but at least we got to spend a day of wildlife viewing and birding at one of our favorite places. Kudos to the Refuge staff for returning the place to as near normal as it can get, six months after the category four hurricane. Clear skies.