Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

I made a picnic lunch for the 4 of us, Karon and her husband Dan, Jim, and me; and off to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge we went. This refuge was established in 1937 to protect migratory birds and native wildlife of coastal Texas. It is one of over 546 national wildlife refuges in the National Wildlife Refuge System. There are over 390 species of birds here, as well as many other animals and plants. This is the winter home for the largest wild flock of whooping cranes (which we didn't see, as far as I could tell.) I don't know all the birds we saw, but in addition to several different kinds of birds, we saw frogs, a snake, wild hogs, and armadillos. We did see roseate spoonbills, but once again, we were too far away to get pictures. We had over 100 pictures on the camera when we got home.

We stopped a little ways into the refuge at a picnic area and prepared to have our lunch of chicken salad sandwiches, chips, fruit and those little "100 calorie" cookie packs. We got everything out of the car and then realized a bag got left at home. Of course, that was the bag with the bread, chips, cookies, paper plates, towels and knives. So we improvised and had lettuce wraps instead of sandwiches. Karon and Dan brought some chips, so we did have those, and fruit. It turned out just fine.

Since we had so many pictures, I had a fairly hard time deciding what to include today. Here's a sampling of our day at the refuge.

Frog, having a lazy float.





Mickey, is that you?

This picture was taken from a long ways off, so theses hogs are pretty fuzzy, but that's what they are
I don't know what this is.



The picnic area where we stopped for our lunch had these amazing, twisted, knots of vine wood

Is this a Wilson's Snipe?

Jim captured this picture of a bee on the water lily

A hawk?

Karon and Jim at one of the observation decks

A great blue heron in flight.

When we got back home, Karon and Dan came in to share a piece of carrot cake. The verdict is that the cake is quite good!

What a wonderful experience we had today. Thank you, Dan and Karon, for driving us, and enjoying this day with us.