Day 38 - Rockport: Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

What we thought that was the most functional and advanced, after only 4 years ago we wonder if the same device does work at all.  This is the case of my digital camera. Today I had to use it, almost half way through our trip, because it has a decent telescopic lens and this was the only way to take pictures of birds in the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. 

In the morning we headed to the 'Big Tree', a large oak in Goose Island State Park, to get a glance of the rare whooping cranes. They are tall birds like the sandhill cranes but white with beautiful fluffy feathers, with black on their wing tips and a red mask. They migrate from Canada to the Texas shore to spend the winter for a trip of 2500 miles. 

There are only about 800 birds left and, thank God, they get to live an average of 22 years.

The road kept going toward the gulf and there we met a couple of ornithologists from Austin. They had a large telescope on a tripod and he was wearing a large plastic disc on his chest with a large microphone in the center. He was recording whooping cranes combating half a mile away.

He let us listen to the sounds. We looked at the whooping cranes. What a marvelous and resilient bird.

They told us another location where we could see them. They were on the lawn of a house that had a deer feeder. There were three whooping cranes and two sandhill cranes.

Whooping Cranes 

Sandhill Cranes

Snowy Egret

Egrets

Artistic Picture 'After Harvey'

We were on our way to the park, but we missed the turn off. So we had to do a u-ie down the road and right there we saw a couple of these beauties: Crested Caracaras or Mexican Eagles

Crested Caracara

The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge is a large protected area, north of Rockport.
There are few trails off of the auto tour loop. We hiked the Heron Flats trail and not only did we see heron and spoonbills, but also several alligators soaking in the sun.

Roseate Spoonbill

Tricolored Heron

Double-crested Cormorant

Reddish Egret next to Roseate Spoonbill

We drove a few miles and took the Jones Lake and the Big Tree trails, where we saw some deer by the shore. Finally we went up to the observation towers from where we had a better view of the previous areas. Still there was no sight of the whooping cranes. Instead we saw egrets, heron, ducks and the largest group of turkey vultures I have ever seen. They come in late in the afternoon and when the tourists are gone, they roost for the night on the observation towers. In fact all the ramps were covered by their poops 😂

Great Egret

Sandpiper

Great Blue Heron

Turkey Vultures

This alligator was guarding her babies nearby