Aransas National Wildlife Preserve

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We went to the Aransas National Wildlife Preserve last Friday, April 14, 2000. This is the reserve that is the winter home of the Whooping Crane. Most had headed north for the summer, and we did not see any of the eleven stragglers. This is a huge reserve, mostly marsh with some Live Oak and Red Bay trees and bushes, like you find in the Wild Horse Desert. This place is a bird watchers paradise, and there were several birders there. It was fun talking to them, as well as looking at and through, their binoculars and spotting scopes. One group had Leitz 8X40 binoculars. The difference between our Bushnell binoculars and theirs was amazing, similar to the spread in the price.

After signing in, we left the Visitor's Center and headed to the first observation deck. There was a cloud of mosquitoes there, and we were eaten alive in about 10 minutes. We moved to the next observation spot. The real big mosquitoes were there. It was unbearable, so we headed back to the Visitor's Center where they sold Deep Woods Off. This saved the day; we were able to spend the rest of the day without being annoyed by pests.

There were other forms of wildlife, in addition to the birds. We saw well over 100 deer. Susie thinks that she saw more deer here in one day than she has seen in all of her life. The ranger said that the deer are usually hard to see, but since it was fawning season, they were on the move.

As it turns out, we were not the top of the food chain here either. This is a 5' to 6' American Alligator. The biggest one we saw was a 10 footer. We talked to another couple who had spotted a 14 footer lying across a path. At one of the ponds, where we spent most of out time, there was an amazing variety of bird life. There were several gators there too. Every so often we would hear a big splash, and when we would turn to look, there would be ripples were a duck used to be.

In addition to the cactus that was in bloom, we saw a family of feral pigs and several unusual birds, many we had never seen before. The birds included: Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks, All of the Egrets, Tricolor Heron, Yellow-Crowned Night Heron, American Bittern, Moorhens, Crested Caracara and Purple Gallinule.

On the way home from the Reserve, we stopped at the Wind Festival in Portland, just north of Corpus Christi. There was an arts and crafts show there. The only thing at the show worth noting was a man selling woven horsehair items. There was a Mexican family selling horse hair woven hatbands at the Ranch Festival in Kingsville. This guy had it kicked up a notch. He had hatbands too, but the highlight was his belts. He dyes the hair and then weaves them into patterns. We could not pass up this opportunity. Susie got a beautiful belt. Each end is tooled leather, but the rest of the belt is woven horsehair, Look closely at the pattern. There appears to be cords, but what does not show is that each one of the "cords" is a bundle of 10 hairs. The back of the belt is woven horsehair too.

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